


war is never cheap dear

by lieselss



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, F/M, Gen, Morally Ambiguous Character, Post-Sozin's Comet, Resistance, Slow Burn, Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:09:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lieselss/pseuds/lieselss
Summary: The team dismissed his assessment as self doubt. But Aang was right— he wasn't ready for the Fire Lord.Half a world apart, a fractured team struggles to survive their new reality as the war rages on.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Sokka & Suki
Comments: 45
Kudos: 103





	1. The Before

**Author's Note:**

> Binged ATLA and present you with this:
> 
> After three years of fighting, Aang doesn't defeat the Ozai during Sozin's comet and rest of Team Avatar is scattered to deal with the aftermath. Some liberties are taken with canon here, namely stretching out events leading up to Sozin's comet over three years, rather than one. Tagged romantic relationships are there eventually, but the focus is on the alarmingly codependent friendships.
> 
> So, fair warning, this is a decidedly darker take.

A short conversation broke up days of silence after leaving Yon Rha shaken in the mud.

A breath, tentative and then:

"We don't make such a bad team."

It wasn't a thank you-- anyone deserves thanks for a good deed, but a teammate? A teammate deserves trust.

Her back was turned to him as she spoke, clutching Appa's reins in a death grip.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asked.

"Yes, maybe. We'll see."

He nodded at her stiff back and settled further into the saddle. There's always clarity in the fallout.

\--

"You lied to Aang," he told her. She made space for him at the base of the long steps, watching the two warriors clash in the fading light.

"I do forgive you," she insisted. 

"I'm glad, but you know I meant about the closure."

Weapons clanged on the beach as Katara considered him. Suki advanced on Sokka, who grinned despite the live steel so near his throat. He pushed his luck, pressing forward toward the Kyoshi warrior, eyes bright with admiration, adoration. 'Try me,' the look begged.

Zuko turned away, deeply uncomfortable with the way those two always managed to make sparring seem _indecent_.

Katara saved him from further discomfort.

"I'm still furious. If I had another chance..."

"I understand."

"Aang won't." The words sound bitter.

"Not all of us can be pacifists," he said automatically. Aang still hadn't answered his question about how he planned to confront his father. The Avatar had grown since their first encounters, as enemies, years ago but Zuko couldn't help be ruffled by the younger boy's naivete. "Even in righteousness there's dirty work."

Katara turned abruptly, as if his pointed comment was a personal attack. "Promise me you won't tell them. About the the man on the ship."

"On my honor."

\--

He picked her to confront Azula with him.

But really, she offered first.

"We make a good team," she said, as they packed up from the Fire Lord's summer home. 

_I won't judge you,_ he heard, _if you don't judge me._

Closure is a slippery beast to chase.

"We do."


	2. The During

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world burns down around them.

Gasping for air on the steps of his childhood home, he's never been more grateful the way the ashes of the fallout from that trip had settled.

Katara was good and kind, but she wasn't a saint.

Thank the spirits above for that.

The sight of his sister's unnatural twitching doesn't alarm him the way a similar sight had on the Southern Raiders ship. Nor does rage fueled focus of the waterbender unsettle him as she forces Azula to her knees, lowering her chest to the ground until just her forehead brushed the stone.

"Have some honor, Fire Lord. Show some respect to your opponent," Katara mocks.

Her voice is deadly calm. In all the time he's know her, he's never heard malice twisting its way through her speech the way it does now. It sends shivers through his broken body.

_"I have unfinished business with your sister," she'd told him that last day on Ember Island, eyes fixed on Aang's scar as he meditated._

_He'd snorted. "Don't we all."_

_"Yeah," Sokka had chimed in, sharpening his sword, "no offense Zuko, but your sister kinda sucks." Suki, still gaunt from her time in prison, nodded in agreement._

She forces Azula's head up to look at her while her body remains in the pantomime of worshipful prostration. 

Part of him— small but there— feels the urge to stop her, to beg for mercy on his sister's behalf. The other part— the one still twitching from the electric current coursing through him— wants to scream to finish her.

"Katara..." he starts. The edges of his world go black before he finishes.

//

His vision is fuzzy as they stumble off the airship. Suki holds one arm with a vice-like grip, only belied by the slight tremor in her arm. Toph hold him upright on the other side, voice cracking as she asks. 

"What's happening?"

The skyline is burnt orange and blinking through the pain he could just make out the flashes in the distance. Raw power, ebbing and flowing evenly. Then just ebbing, ebbing ebbing. Suki's grip wavers. Fear chokes his throat. 

"Nothing good."

//

There's no exit wound, like Aang had had, just the tendrils of the starburst stubborn under the span of her spread hands.

The fire sages cluster by the doorway, whispering to one another. Azula rages behind her, spitting flames. Rage bubbles to the base of her throat and the urge to lash out and constrict roils.

She feels shame, shame at the urge and shame at her victory over the fire princess. She'd bent her blood without thought, on instinct.

_You stopped Hama on instinct too, to protect your friends,_ her conscious justifies. _This is no different._

_But you also mocked her, reveled in your power,_ her subconscious reminds her, _Like you punished the wrong commander with righteous rage._

The glowing under her hands falters. She breathes deeply.

Water gives and it takes. It cannot do both at the same time.

The disgraced Prince groans and shifts. Azula stops thrashing. The sages murmur louder.

Relief courses through her.

"Well look who decided to come back to the land of the living," she jokes weakly, sarcastic and genuine all at once.

He coughs, and gives a wane smile.

"You sound like your brother."

She laughs deeply. It sounds like success.

//

There's no light, just darkness and the sound of Toph's bending as she urges them deeper under the scorched earth.

Sokka stumbles and nearly takes her with him, a rough stone support catching his chest before he topples. Toph sighs.

"We'll stay here for tonight—"

"Everything is night down here," Sokka grumbles. Suki knows in the dark Toph is glaring. The earthbender clears her throat pointedly.

"We'll stay here for tonight. I'll widen the cavern and we should have plenty of air until morning."

"Loving the emphasis on should, Toph."

"Sokka!" Suki admonishes. 

"I can shove you back to the surface if you'd prefer," Toph snarls. Sokka lurches forward under her grip.

"Toph!"

They spend the rest of the evening in darkness and silence. Light only comes when she closes her eyes and relives the roar of fire racing across the Earth Kingdom.

//

Three things happen in quick succession.

He struggles to his feet, leaning heavily on Katara.

The bells on the other side of the palace beginning tolling.

Appa lets out a noise he can only describe as a wail.

The sound sobers Azula who grins broadly as the bells continue clanging, wildly and rapidly. It's not a mourning tune, but rather, celebratory. With cold certainty he realizes they aren't tolling for him.

"Oh Zuzu, father is going to be so disappointed."

Katara understands the crazed woman at their feet a moment before he does, fear lacing across her features as she beelines for Appa. He stumbles back when Azula spits blue flames at his feet. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the sages racing out, followed by palace guards. Azula cackles.

"The Phoenix King sends his regards."

He runs.

He feels light headed and urges his body across the courtyard. He can feel flames licking his heels.

It can't be.

This isn't how it was supposed the end.

He and Katara took down Azula. Sokka, Suki and Toph would take the down the air fleet. Aang would take down his father.

His father.

Zuko directs his dwindling energy into a wildly spinning wheel of flames behind him before stumbling in the center of the courtyard, not far from where he'd fallen less than an hour earlier.

The bells echo rattles in his head. Cheering rises from beyond the palace walls.

The wall of guards advance toward him—

and are washed away, against the colonnade, where they freeze. 

He doesn't understand where all that water came from.

A strong arm wraps around his chest and pulls.

Katara hauls him into Appa's saddle, scrambling to the reins.

"Yip yip!" she screams.

On the ground, Azula taunts from where she's still tied.

"Don't stray too far from home Zuzu!"

//

The closest thing to hope they've found is a half destroyed home in a mostly razed village filled with nearly rotten food when they emerge for air.

The home had already been picked over by the Fire Nation army, Suki declared. Said army wasn't too far away, Toph could tell. But they needed oxygen and food and different clothes so it would have to be safe enough.

"I'll be back," Suki promises. "Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."

"I'm weaponless and can't walk, where do you expect me to go?"

Sokka's voice is harsh and abrasive and so un-Sokka that is startles her. Suki sighs and her footsteps retreat.

She's too tired to fight, to coax out what was wrong. That's always Katara's role. Or was. Aang would tell them they needed to have hope that Katara and Zuko had made it out of the Royal Palace alive.

But Aang had been snuffed out, Sokka had said, like a candle. And if Aang was gone, true hope was too.

So she encases Sokka's broken leg in an earthen cast and sits shoulder to shoulder with him, keeps her mouth shut, and waits.

"Put the knife down."

"C'mon, this is farm country. No one's walking around with a warrior's haircut."

The fierce whispering slowly stirs her awake. She keeps her eyes shut.

"No."

"Damn it, Sokka. Unless you have a better idea of how we blend in stop being a child!"

There's a long pause before Sokka speaks, softer and more somber than before. "We haven't been children for years."

"I know."

Toph feels Suki shuffle closer to Sokka, hears the low whine of a blade being drawn.

"You still look handsome," Suki promises. Sokka laughs but it's mirthless. The sound grates, like nails on slate. "Come help me become some raven haired beauty. Let's let her rest."

Grunts and groans as Sokka struggles to his feet and then the sound of footsteps retreat. 

She sleeps.

//

"We have to get to the Earth Kingdom—"

"Katara..."

"We have to find Aang. And then Sokka, and Suki, and Toph—"

"Katara."

"And we'll regroup in Ba Sing Se with your uncle—"

"Katara!" he shouts, grabbing her wrists so she looks at him. Her eyes are bloodshot and wild and he in his grip he can feel the briefest instant where her reflexes resist tossing him deep into the dark ocean before them. "Katara," he tries again, voice softening. She tugs lightly away from him. He loosens his hold and she whirls to face the waves rolling in, arms wrapped around her knees. He breathes deep.

"We can't just fly into the Earth Kingdom—"

"I know."

"We don't know if the others, if Aang—"

"I know!"

He shuts up, wincing as he turns to sit should to shoulder with her. The only sounds on the empty island are the waves and Appa whimpering in his sleep.

Neither of them close their eyes until the sun breaks the horizon. They lay down, backs to one another.

He breaks the silence before exhaustion takes them. "What now?"

//

He was so mad when his father left for war and left him behind. After being dragged through destroyed village after destroyed village he wishes he could hug him, telling him thank you and he was right.

He doesn't even feel old enough now, three years into it and a grown man. 

Despite its airships destroyed by their ragtag band, the Fire Nation army had laid waste to vast swaths of the Earth Kingdom. Its soldiers watched coldly at the human wreckage that drifted from ruin to ruin, scouring the crowds for anyone who might cause trouble.

He hopes beyond hope, if she's alive, Katara is far away from the Fire Nation army. 

"I want to punch each one of them off that cliff," Toph mutters as she fidgets with the bandages around her eyes.

"Shh," he hisses. Suki builds a makeshift shelter above them on the edge of the refugee march. They're too close to the rest of the group to risk her earth bending and Sokka's leg is still very much broken, which leaves Suki to labor for their trio.

Her blackened hair falls out of its up-do in places. He misses what it was like before.

They'd all gotten makeovers, at Suki's insistence. His hair was cropped close to his head, Water Tribe battle armor discarded in favor of farmer's work wear. Suki's hair was dyed and pulled back into a common style for Earth Kingdom women. Toph hair had been roughly chopped like a young boy's, her clothes matching his own and her clouded eyes covered by a large bandage around her head. 

At a glance, and only a glance, they could pass as farming family, displaced and injured in the invasion.

If they can just make it south past Ba Sing Se, they have a hope of regrouping with the scattered forces, of surviving to fight another day.

That's what he tells himself, every night and each morning and through each spasm of pain.

He's the hope guy now, with Katara somewhere across the world and Aang... missing.

But with every mile, and every trickle of news from further afield-- Ba Sing Se held under the black and red banner, Fire Lord _Azula_ on the throne— makes it harder.

//

She screams into the howling wind whipping across the tundra. Yells until her voice is hoarse. The snow and ice beats her skin and she welcomes the pain.

They lost. She didn't believe it when the bells tolled in Caldera City. She didn't believe it on the long flight to the North Pole. She barely believed it when the words came from Chief Arnook's mouth.

The Fire Lord defeated the Avatar.

_Aang_ , dead.

The Earth Kingdom fallen and Fire Nation on the march, heading for the North Pole again, hoping to intercept the infant Avatar— or worse.

"We have to go," Zuko reminds her as the summer storm she'd conjured over the tundra slowly dies down and her fury settles to an eternal simmer. The Chief had said the same once he'd overcome the shock of their appearance.

Apparently, they were wanted fugitives.

If the Fire Navy arrived when they were still here, well, no one wanted to think too much about that. 

"One stop first."

Zuko refuses to follow her into the spirit oasis, the three year old shame of his last visit still fresh. Time doesn't heal all wounds.

She kneels before the water, looking to where she knows Yue is watching her.

"I know I'm being greedy," she says, a hint defensive, as she fills the entire water skin from the pool. There was a high chance she was never returning to the North Pole, much less the oasis. She had to play her advantages when they presented themselves.

And those advantages were slim. Could be counted on a single hand even.

One master waterbender

One master firebender

One air bison.

One skin of spirit water.

And a whole lot of righteous anger coursing through their veins.

"It's just us now," Zuko says, a hint of apprehension coloring his voice as he watches the tundra disappear below them. 

"Yeah."

"Go team."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually conceived post Southern Raiders episode as an exploration of Zuko and Katara's friendship and then we ended up here, more dark and trauma filled than expected!
> 
> This somewhat also hinges on the idea that the events of the series unfolded over several years rather than just one. Zuko joined the team about a year before Sozin's comet, with Sokka and Katara finding Aang in the iceberg ~2 years before that. So by the time this fic starts, they're all almost 3 years older than at the start of the series (which is how long I assumed the series spanned when I saw 3 seasons before actually watching and realizing I was drastically off)


	3. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The survivors confront the fallout.

"Where did the water come from?"

Her hands slow their path across his chest.

"After the Agni Kai, when we were escaping. Everyone was flung away but there's no pond in that part of the palace."

She resumes her track, the faint glow of her hands mixing with the warm light of the fire. He winces as she reaches deeper into the center of the burn, where it's raw and blistered. He'd neglected it in their chaotic escape, first from the capital, then from the North Pole. Katara chewed him out for it, when they had a moment to breathe.

He'd been dutifully allowing the healing sessions since. It wasn't much of a hardship— under her hands he feels relaxed for the first time in a long time.

"The gardens. The air. Water is life, it's in everything," she finally answers with a shrug. 

"People."

"Does that scare you?" she asks, hedging. The follow up question goes unspoken: _Do I scare you?_

He takes in the Katara above him, with gentle hands and hair still stubbornly twisted in a style for a young Water Tribe girl, not a woman grown. He tries to square it with powerful bender who dropped his sister to her knees, who took out an entire unit of Royal Palace guards with a flick of her wrists, who conjured a blizzard on the clear day out of grief.

_I won't judge you if you don't judge me._

"No." 

//

The earth is disconsolate. 

She never could have imagined a sea of people radiating the same emotion, scared and afraid. The drumming of footsteps reaches for miles, maybe even beyond what she can see.

"Think of all the new friends we'll make!" 

Sokka's voice is forcefully chipper, slinging an arm around her shoulders and losing his balance in the process. He'd graduated to limping along with a makeshift crutch, one she'd bent for him at the beginning, when they were still fumbling around underground.

"Plus maybe they'll have some good news from the city!" he adds. 

"Maybe," Suki says gently, placating.

Toph's frustration soars. He doesn't believe what he's saying, ever since they joined this train of despair ever word out of his mouth has been a sugar coated lie. She doesn't know what prompted this fake optimistic Sokka but for Suki's sake she keeps her comments to herself.

_"He's trying, Toph."_

_"Trying what? To make us feel better?"_

_"Yes! To not feel like he failed!"_

_"But he didn't fail! Aang failed!"_

_She anticipated Suki's slap before it landed, catching her wrist. Suki deflated._

_"He was just a kid Toph."_

_Was. Past Tense._

_"Yeah maybe that was the problem."_

_"Toph, we can't be angry over what didn't happen. We have to keep pushing."_

_"But I am angry! I want to throw bricks and I can't even do that! If Aang's just a kid, then so am I! But the difference is I'm not some naive pacifist who forgot he's been fighting," her voice cracked with anger, "evil! For three years!"_

_Suki sighed, leaned back on the broken beams of the house they'd been rummaging through._

_"We don't know what happened out there. I know I wasn't around him as long but-- yes he didn't like violence, but he also loved you guys. I know he would have done anything to protect if not the world, then his family."_

_Toph waited for the other shoe to drop but Suki was telling the truth._

//

For a few months, hopping through the abandoned archipelago, it's almost idyllic.

The Northern Tribe, despite shooing them out, had loaded Appa's saddle with as many supplies as they could manage. Plenty of food and water, bedrolls and warm clothes. 

They sleep in caves dug into porous volcanic rocks, eat by the ocean's break line. She swims each morning in the cool salty water, deep and long, as if the ocean could cleanse the horror of the past year. Could cleanse her even, of the newest fury burning low and steady in her heart ever since Azula released that lightening from her fingertips and only embedded deeper with every shitty thing they'd learned after.

They don't fly to the Earth Kingdom. If Aang was dead well, spirits knows what happened to the rest of them.

Zuko spends his time working through sets and sets of firebending stances with a dedication that perhaps shouldn't be surprising for a man who spent his early teenage years tracking the Avatar with a single minded focus. 

She watches him while she lets the noon sun dry her out after her swims, enjoying the way the last few summer days warm her skin. If he's bothered by her audience he doesn't say anything, falling into the same routine each day.

She always thought of firebending as brutish and violent, unimaginative and inflexible. But watching her companion she could be persuaded to change her mind. 

He strikes with aggression and power yet the flames are almost beautiful and mesmerizing. Graceful, even. Almost like...

"Waterbending."

He stumbles out of the complex sequence he was working on, glaring at her for the distraction.

"Do you mind?"

She ignores him. 

"Waterbending, those moves are like waterbending."

"Yes, and?"

"You're not a waterbender."

"Eloquent," he snorts. "My— my uncle showed me. He pulled a lot from waterbenders, like the way to redirect lightening." He rubs the shiny scar on his chest self-consciously, "Or, in theory anyway."

Her heart pangs at the mention of Iroh. They haven't spoken much at all really, both content in comfortable silence. But when they have spoken, neither have been brave enough to pick that particular open wound— the people they lost. It's easier to keep the pain buried inside. 

A voice that sounds like Aang tells her it's not healthy. She pushes that down further and steers the conversion back to more comfortable territory— their own mortality.

"So you're telling me my own bending saved my life."

"Yeah, no, I saved your life. You're welcome, by the way."

"But you almost died."

"I didn't though."

"Thanks to me."

"Thanks to you," he agrees, surrendering a small smile. She hops to her feet.

"Let me show you some more techniques, so you can keep not dying."

She knows they will have to leave their island soon. Even rationing, they were quickly running out of food. But she commits their evening practices to memory-- feet planted firmly into the surf, the dying sunlight washing them in only shades of red and gold that don't disgust her. It'll be a time she looks back on and thinks, despite everything, she was happy.

If only for a moment.

//

Sokka groans in pain behind her, clutching uselessly at his leg. Shame burns her face as she kneels on the hard ground, hands clasped in front of her, and begs:

"Please."

She has to force the word from her lips, this humility and deference to the vile woman in front of her. 

"Please," she repeats.

"Are you dense? I already told your husband, no papers, no entry," she says, shaking her baton. Of course that was the part of Sokka's tale that stuck.

It could've been the end of it, she would've helped Toph carefully drag Sokka and his newly re-broken leg away from the checkpoint. Sokka's leg would have healed, they would've regrouped, come up with a new plan to get south. 

But then the solider spits at her.

Toph abandons Sokka on the ground and _lunges_ toward her. Suki realizes what's about to happen and shoots out her arm, grabbing Toph's ankle and disrupting her set feet and the avalanche that surely was about to follow.

The fire nation soldier however, doesn't know how close she came to being crushed. All she sees is an uppity farmer boy daring to get in her face.

The flames fly before Suki can react.

Toph reels back, screaming and clutching her eyes. Sokka reaches out to catch her as she stumbles, despite his own injury, hollering when Toph crumbles, knocking into him.

Suki is frozen, horrified. She has no weapon, no plan and looking around as the other refugees cower and shrink away from their trio, no allies either.

The solider smirks. "Can I help you with anything else?" she mocks.

She draws herself off the ground. 

_"Listen, I get it I wouldn't want to be in your position either. I'm just saying sometimes people deserve what's coming to them," Sokka said, leaning back into her lap. He lifted her hand to continue playing with his hair. She smacked his head gently but gave in._

_They were having the Ozai conversation._

_Again._

_"But you can't let emotions cloud your fighting!" Aang argued. "The monks always said that's how you get knocked out of the air."_

_"He's kind of right," she conceded. "That's what they teach the Kyoshi Warriors, to have a clear head in battle."_

_"Emotions aren't inherently bad," Katara argued. "You can't let your emotions cloud your reasoning, but we're only human. We're allowed to be angry."_

Suki looks at Sokka and Toph, thinks of Aang, gone, and Katara and Zuko, missing or worse.

She lets the anger wash over her.

And spits.

She takes the briefest satisfaction at the shock that comes over the firebender's face. "You just won't learn you insolent--"

"Is there a problem here Corporal?"

The woman lowers her hand, the orange glow disappearing. "No sir."

"I'm sorry about my soldiers' manners miss," he says, offering his hand. "We of course understand how difficult the siege was on your people, with those traitors destroying so much. Please take this for your journey, for your friend, along with my apologies."

Suki looks at the wet cloth in her hand for Toph's burned eyes. A wet rag in exchange for a broken leg, a scorched face and a decimated country. And this man thought he was a gentleman for it.

She clenches the rag in her fist. Let's the anger wash over her. 

And speaks.

"Thank you, for your kindness." She smiles through her teeth, the pantomime of grace. The officer nods, self satisfied. She forces the smile wider as he helps her haul Sokka to his feet. 

It doesn't reach her eyes.

//

He promised her this was a village in the ass end of no where. Nobody would recognize them, they'd snag food and get out. Back to their island, in time even for evening waterbending forms.

He didn't anticipate this.

The shopkeep nods toward Katara, filling a jug from the well, as he hands Zuko the jerky. "Your wife is very exotic. Haven't seen a woman like that since my time in the navy. Water tribe peasants, got skin like that."

Zuko blinks and fumbles for an answer. There's a lot to unpack there. 

He settles on glowering in response. "I would encourage you to quit insulting my— my wife," he grumbles, pulling the wide brim of his hat lower over his scar, only barely tripping over his invented marital status.

Not quite Sokka's silver tongue, but he likes to think the warrior would've been impressed.

The old man lifts his hands, "No disrespect son, every man has their own taste in women. Personally always liked those Earth Kingdom broads, they were real affectionate,” he says, implication heavy in his voice. 

Zuko’s ready to abandon his patience when Katara approaches them.

"Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine, honey," he says pointedly, taking the water jug from her. He hopes the nosy old bastard doesn't see the questioning look she shoots him. Her muscles tense at the endearment and as she passes him the jug she shifts her stance just so— battle ready— but she keeps her mouth shut. 

Smart girl.

"We're ready to go," he announces, shuffling them away from the shop. He sees the old man now talking to his next customer, gesturing toward the pair of them. He inclines his head toward her, muttering into her hair.

"Do you trust me?" 

From a distance, it looks affectionate. Mai's face flashes through his head, her sharp smile, her warmth next to him on Ember Island. Watching her fade into the distance at Boiling Rock.

"Yes," Katara says immediately, dissolving Mai's face from his mind's eye. He has to confess, he's slightly surprised. He's worked damn hard for her trust, but the affirmation is still surprising.

"What was that all about _honey?_ " she asks sarcastically after he turns them down an alley off the main road. 

"Either he took the lessons on the greatness of our country a little too much to heart, or he's suspicious of us."

"What?"

"He thought we were an um, odd looking couple."

"Wha— oh," she says, a storm brewing on her face. She peers past his shoulder, checking the street. "You said we'd be safer on the outskirts of the Fire Nation!"

"It's not like I've spent a ton of time here the last five years! I didn't consider it okay?"

"Damn it, Zuko."

"Shh!"

The storm doesn't move from Katara's eyes as they wind their way out of the town and find Appa still hidden where they left him.

"So I didn't factor in the bigot, but we got our supplies and we're back by sunset!" he insists sharply as they land back on their island, preempting the argument that was sure to come.

"What did you say to that man?"

"What?"

"When he implied we were an odd couple. Because of me, no doubt. What did you say?"

"I uh, told him not to insult my wife."

She narrows her eyes at him and he feels caught out, unable to figure out what's going through her head. For the second time today, she surprises him. "You're a good man, Zuko."

It's a nice moment.

It doesn't last long.

Appa roars and Katara is moving before he can blink, flask in hand, just beyond the edge of their stretch of beach where an old lava flow juts out. 

He takes off after her. He sees the flames before he rounds the outcropping and hits the sand, narrowly avoiding the blaze that shoots over his head.

Katara is handling a squad of soldiers deftly, the ocean churning next to her. He notes the insignia on the ship docked on the shore and jumps to help Appa, who's swiping his massive paws at the soldiers closing in.

It becomes clear that while the unit is green, their commander unfortunately is not. His eyes widen when he spots Zuko, darting back and forth between him and Katara. 

"Get the traitor," the commander shouts, pushing toward Zuko with a series of short, sharp strikes, "Dead of alive."

"The waterbender sir?" one of his sailor's shout, stumbling from Zuko's counter attack.

The commander smirks. "Just dead is fine."

Zuko risks it, opening himself for the wind-up, then bringing his palms together to release a torrent of flame, cutting himself a wide radius. The commander falls first, knocking over the others as he goes down.

"Katara! We gotta go!" he yells, sending a flurry of shots as he scrambles into the saddle. Stray embers singe the air bison's fur.

"Katara!"

She turns toward him and the ocean heaves, arching over her attackers and crashing at her feet. She shouts for him to go, to take off over the water. She takes running leap, turning the wave back toward the ocean and freezing it as she goes. A slick runway. She tumbles into the saddle behind him with a thud and a quiet 'oof'.

"How did they find us?"

"It's a local battalion, maybe dumb luck, maybe someone in that village spotted Appa when we left earlier. Either way, we need to get far away from here."

Running, always running.

//

It turns out their expectations far exceeded reality.

Not much changes once they make it through the checkpoint, more damaged than they'd approached it. The river of human refuse continues its path, splintering off into various tributaries the farther they go.   
  
Without Toph's bending, their shelter remains lacking and food and water scarce. He can feel Suki's ribs under the breadth of his palms at night. She's even thinner than when he pulled her out of prison and the jutting bone feels like failure.

He re-bandages Toph's face every morning, desperately wishing for an ounce of his sister's healing skill to soothe the angry raw skin that spans the younger girl's face.

"Stop brooding, blockhead. It's not like this blinded me," she says with a laugh, waving a hand in front of her eyes. It doesn't help his mood. Hope guy was abandoned at the checkpoint with the sharp crack of a baton against his weak leg.

"Besides," she continues, "Think how annoyed Sparky's gonna be when he's not the only mysterious, scarred one in our group." That does help a little, though not so much for the mental image as the faint idea that maybe they’re not the sole survivors. 

The main improvement is the farther south they go, the fewer Fire Nation soldiers they see. They haven't disappeared, but they don't line the roads or the camps, menacing people who've lost everything. It improves the camaraderie of the masses, with groups gathering around fires in the increasingly cold evening hours. There's no food, but they share stories, advice and periodically, mostly importantly, news.

"I'm telling you, it was King Bumi! Outside my own home!"

The pot bellied man is gesticulating wildly at his disbelieving companions. A long faced man chucks a pebble at him. Sokka glances over his shoulder at the group, interest piqued. 

"Where did you say you came from?"

"Ba Sing Se by way of Omashu!" the man says proudly. "Covered his highness's getaway, I'll tell you that. Damn Fire Nation didn't know what hit them," he says flexing. The earth ripples almost imperceptibly under their feet.

"Wan, shh! You don't know who'd listening," his companion whispers frantically.

“Was there a fire bender with him?” Toph asks, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. “Older guy, loves tea?”

"Sorry, didn’t see any friendly firebenders.” Wan apologizes, clearly curious about burnt child before him willingly looking for firebenders. “Are you traveling from Ba Sing Se too?”

Traveling. Such a nice term for such an ugly few months. As if this was a vacation.

“In a way. King Bumi is actually a friend of ours.”

“You don’t say?”

It’s dangerous information. Suki would fret but she's asleep under the awning that passes for their home. The shame of failure comes crashing back. He can't walk, can't defend himself, can't provide for anyone he loves.

But he used to be someone important. He found the Avatar, he was a master swordsman. He was a brilliant strategist.

He looks at Toph across the fire, face fallen at Wan's answer about General Iroh.

He decides to share the information anyway.

“It started when the Avatar snuck into Omashu.”

//

The navy finds them again within days. And they've brought back up.

It appears the directive has changed about bringing him alive. He can't help wonder who's call that was, his father's or sister's

“We need to split up,” he says, fire rope swinging like a scythe. Katara is at his back and he can hear the crack of her water whip doing the same.

“Are you nuts? They’re goal is to split us! We fight better as a unit!” she says, raising her whip up and letting loose a flurry of spikes. He hears pained groans behind him.

They _are_ fighting well together. They'd fought side by side before, as one another's back up but now they're like his broadswords, two halves of the same weapon.

They're deadlier together but still plenty deadly alone. 

"Trust me," he begs.

"You're leaning into that a little too much," she mutters, pulling more of the ocean ashore into her control. She steps forward, pushing punching out and the water rolls like an avalanche across the sand. "I'll give us some air support. Appa!"

The sky bison roars, barreling down the beach and skidding to a stop at her feet. She scrambles on, raining down darts of ice as she takes off.

The move has the desired effect, splitting the remaining soldiers between them. Katara circles above, raining knives down and Zuko sees the heads fall one by one. It's terrifying, it's lethal, and he's once again reminded how grateful he is to have Katara with him rather than against him.

He uses the distraction to push the attackers back, the same smug commander at the vanguard.

"Come get your bounty, commander!" he roars, pushing forward. They've maneuvered the remaining troops to the water's edge. "What's royalty worth these days?"

The commander rebuffs his latest strike. "Royalty? High. Traitors like you, not so much." 

Zuko breathes deeply, letting energy roll through him. His body moves on its own accord. Fighting for your life is terrifying, but it's certainly liberating.

"That's big talk from a small time fleet commander," he snarls. He's in close combat range now, dodging punches as well as flames. He lands a well placed kick and the commander sprawls in the sand, raising a fan of flames in time to block Zuko's strike and force him back, just slightly. He takes the advantage retreating toward the ship.

"Guess I should settle for sometime small time prize then, your highness," he shouts, spitting the honorific. "Nothing more worthless than a water tribe savage."

An explosion from the ship and Appa howls. Zuko frantically looks to the sky in time to see the bison falling toward the water, his rider tumbling out of the saddle.

"Katara!" her name tears from his throat and the fear in it frightens him. She was right, his mind taunts, they wanted to split you. 

He barely has time to process the scene unfolding when the commander presses his luck, backed by reinforcements scrambling off the ship.

Zuko lets himself sink back into the haze of fighting. Muscle memory guides him but anger provides the fuel. The world narrows and buzzes incoherently around him, the flames rising higher and higher in a whirlwind, dancing under his control and lashing out indiscriminately.

_Stupid stupid stupid_ is the only thought that breaks through. Until the screaming starts. Not the hollers that drift across any battlefield, but pure terror.

The ocean churns fiercely, waves as tall as mountains forming in the small bay. And at their head, Katara, suspended above by her own power. Her hair is wild and blood is mixing with saltwater as the waves shift under her hands like puppets. The sky is clear behind her, sun shining brightly. There's no moon, full or otherwise.

_Agni_.

The ships creak and groan, pulled out deeper by the tide. The waves crash over them and slowly dissipate. The screams stop. The ships don't reappear. 

The commander and the few remaining troops stand shell-shocked on the beach. Zuko presses the advantage.

He leaves the commander alone on the newly empty shoreline, with a hasty message scrawled:

_Better luck next time_.

//

The conversation is low and muttered, clearly not to be overheard by their superiors much less Suki.

"Did you hear what happened in the Northern fleet?"

"Never thought I'd be happy to be in the Earth Kingdom."

"Three ships!"

"I heard they left the captain alive, to send a message."

"Three! Ships!"

"I heard the Fire Lord raised the bounty on their heads. Literally their heads, they just need proof of death."

"It's a shame about the Prince, spent too much time with his weakling uncle."

"I don't know, I heard he defeated the Fire Lord the night of the comet—"

"Shh! Don't say blasphemous things!"

"—and that's how they escaped! Him and the Avatar's waterbender."

"I heard she's a witch."

"I mean, how hard can it be to find a waterbender in the Fire Nation? It's not like we're overflowing with them."

"Was that a water pun?"

"I kind of hope they make it to the Earth Kingdom—"

"Are you trying to be court marshaled? Or worse?"

"—so we can take a crack at the bounty! Angi knows we could all use the money!"

"They sunk three ships! And you think you're gonna take them down with that candle light you call firebending?"

The group erupts in laughter at their comrade's expense and Suki takes the opportunity to gather her food scraps and slip away from the village center. She glances over her shoulder until she reaches the edge of town and takes off at a sprint toward the refugee camp.

//

Zuko won't stop hovering. Is this how everyone had meant when they complained about her mothering?

The voice in her head is Sokka's and sarcastic as always: _Now she gets it._

"I told you, I'll heal it myself when I'm done with Appa," she says exasperated, touching the tender edges of the gash on her temple. She'd hit it on the edge of the saddle, when the fireball had knocked them out of the sky. Appa grumbles as she moves her hands further up his flank where he'd been hit. Luckily it was just a graze but even still, the wound was large. 

"If you wait too long it's going to scar."

"Good."

A sigh. "Katara."

"Zuko," she mimics. He sighs again, leaning against their packs with a huff. 

"We need to move soon."

"I know."

"They're going to be looking for Appa," he says softer. She rests her head against the warm fur. 

"I know."

//

"They're alive!"

Toph grumbles as she turns over on her mat, tempted to send Suki to the floor if she keeps hollering like that so early in the morning.

She sounds out of breath when she slides into their tent.

"Sokka, Toph, they're alive!"

"What are you talking about?" he asks, voice hoarse with sleep.

"Katara and Zuko, they're alive!"

Toph feels Sokka sit up abruptly. "How on earth could you know that?" he asks sharply.

"The soldiers in the village were gossiping about a bounty. I stuck around to listen, it's them! They're on the run somewhere in the Fire Nation!"

She trails off at the end realizing how it sounds. On one hands, their friends aren't dead. On the other, there's a price on their heads to make sure they end up that way.

But despite that, Toph feels the same small fire catching as when she heard King Bumi had survived the siege. It feels like hope, warm in her chest.

"They're alive," she whispers. Suki engulfs her in a hug and Toph can't help the laughter that escapes her. Sokka repeats the words again, voice lighter than before, as if repetition will make it stick. Suki pulls him toward them into a group hug, laughing in disbelief.

_They're alive._

_We're not alone._

_//_

It's raining, because of course it is. Storm season in the Fire Nation meant rain, the summer warmth fading from the northernmost regions and a cooler winter encroaching.

Old servants would tsk their tongues, whispering about the changing of the winds and ill omens on dark storm clouds. A season for spirits his mother called it, far out of earshot of Ozai. 

_"Spirits aren't real," Azula insisted haughtily. "This is dumb, I'm going to play with Ty Lee and Mai."_

_His mother sighed. "I would like to hear more about the spirits, mother," he said, clutching his knees. It coaxed a smile._

_"Okay sweetheart."_

A choking sob breaks the silence of their hike up the ridge. They've been walking all day, every supply they possess shoved hastily into heavy packs weighing them down more. Katara had been silent since they left Appa, just before daybreak. 

Now she's collapsed on the uneven ground, hands gripping at the earth slowly turning to mud.

Zuko hesitates, unsure of how to approach her. She was always the touchy-feely one of the group, initiating almost every group hug he'd been dragged into. But he was decidedly... not.  
  
She breathes shaky breaths, trying to control it but the tears keep coming, not disguised by the steady rain.

He drops his pack and kneels down beside her, keeping some distance. He's become accustomed to her rage and anger-- so like his own-- since they fled Caldera City, never directed at him but at the world. But in all that time he's never seen a single tear.

Screw it.

He wraps his arms around her, holding her shaking shoulders tight.

"I'm, I'm sorry," she wheezes, each word a monstrous effort. 

"Shh, it's okay."

"He, he must have been so scared," she hiccups. 

_Aang. Of course._

He pulls her closer, as if he could hold in the cracks forming, as if his own pain wasn't so shallowly below his skin too. He tried to suppress it, they both had, with bravado and rage and sun-soaked ignorance. But the inertia of that day was bound to catch them eventually.

Her arms wind around him, clutching tightly at his back. "They all must have been so scared," she says, barely a whimper. 

_Aang. Toph. Suki. Sokka. His uncle. Her father. Mai._

The rain falls harder and he can feel the pain overflowing, his eyes watering. For their friends, their family. For his country, the world. 

For them.

The pain bursts through. The storm thunders on.

"We're alone."


	4. The Gameplan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morality's all a matter of perspective.

In the Earth Kingdom, they're called freedom fighters. When there are no soldiers or boot-lickers around, the downtrodden and the frustrated share the small pieces of information leaking out of the Fire Nation.

Factories destroyed, roads blocked, communications interrupted.

"Maybe it's a rebellion?" Wan asks in his deep baritone. "Shh!" Lem admonishes in his constant worried way. Suki can't decide if he's always been this way or something prompted the nervousness. She's not about to ask though—rule one of the tent is the past is past.

"No one's listening," Toph assures him. Lem shoots her a disbelieving look. 

"How can you be sure?"

"Years of practice."

"You're a strange one, Toph."

"Tell me about it," Sokka jokes, unfurling the scroll on the tent's dusty floor. By her count, there's nearly a platoon's worth of people in the tent, including Toph, Sokka and herself. Wan & Lem, from Ba Sing Se. The farmer’s daughter who’s allowed them to set up camp at the corner of her mostly razed property. The butcher’s apprentice, the post master’s mother. The old married couple from the Fire Nation colonies and the traumatized young mother and her son, who haven’t spoken much at all. All vetted by Toph.

“This is not going to be some quick revenge,” Sokka warns. “Though someone is clearly getting that satisfaction in the Fire Nation.”

_“It’s them,” he whispered into her collarbone when they heard about a sole factory collapsing out of nowhere. There’s absolute certainty in his voice. “She’s done it before.”_

_He told her about Jang Hui and the Painted Lady and his sister’s compassion._

_“She's out there, somewhere, doing something. She swore to me she'd never turn her back on people who needed help. I have to do something.”_

_Then came more reports, more factories down._

_More casualties._

_And Suki can't help but worry: who are the people she's decided need her help?_

_She thought of the Katara knew, the caring and passionate girl from her brother's stories, the team mom barely out of childhood herself. But Suki can't ignore the rest of the woman; the one in the story the soldiers had told. The one who sunk three ships at high noon, who left a sole survivor on the beach with a message. Suki knew this Katara too— always having to fight to prove her worth. She's fiercely protective, as quick to judge as she was to anger with a stubborn streak a mile wide. She couldn’t help but think of her initial grudge toward Zuko, her rage before going after the Southern Raiders. Of the long debates of the meaning of justice on Ember Island._

_Of Aang dead and her and Zuko stranded in hostile territory, cornered._

_“We have to do something,” Sokka still insisted, glaring at the empty scroll in front of him. He didn’t mention Katara, she didn’t push._

_“We’ll do something,” she promised, taking the quill from him, gently. “Let’s start small.”_

“We’ll be playing the long game,” she says to the tent at large, stepping out from behind Sokka. He smiles as he watches her and it warms her heart. “Collecting supplies and information—"

“Until the right moment,” Sokka butts in excitedly. Suki rolls her eyes. With a tilt toward Toph he adds: "Just like King Bumi says.”

“And how will we know when that is?” Wan asks.

“Trust me, we’ll know.”

//

In the capital, they call them terrorists.

She knows this because that's what the factory foreman screams into the whir of machinery when Zuko drops in from above dressed like a shadow, their third raid in as many weeks. He lays down fire as she lands gently behind him, knocking back the responding guards with a wall of ice crystallizing from the steamy air. 

Bells are clanging wildly and the foreman is still shouting 'They're here! The terrorists!'. It's beginning to grate on her nerves, as if somehow they're the bad guys here. The foreman opens his mouth again as he backpedals, shooting off weak fans of flame toward Zuko, who's barely broken a sweat batting them away. Katara has heard enough, sealing him to the closest wall with a band of ice around his mouth.

The floor is laid out much the same as the other facilities they've seen, uniformity in production proving a weakness in defense— although she supposes they're not exactly what Fire Lords past had factored into their industrial expansion. Zuko starts to her right, heating pipes and she follows closely behind, freezing the steam inside until they crack, workers scattering as they sprint through the warehouse.

A fireball catches her sleeve as they turn the corner and she curses a blue streak— this is by far the fastest any soldiers have ever responded. 

Zuko backs up to her, shouting over the groaning of the factory floor above. "We need to get out of here!"

"We're not done yet!"

"Would you rather be permanently done?"

Only half the factory is knocked out of commission with popped rivets and corroded machinery but half is enough for them to slip away in the chaos and leave the soldiers stuck with stabilizing a building or following them into dark. They choose the factory, just like Zuko promised they would when he tugged her arm and pulled her deeper into the abyss of trees. No one wants to explain unmet quotas, he said, even less than explaining how two wanted fugitives got away.

He was right to call it of course, not that she wants to admit it.

She pokes irritably at the fire, it's warmth safely hidden in the pit at the foot of their shelter. It flares in an unnatural warning, fueled by more than kindling and she drops her twig with a huff. 

"You can stop that," she murmurs. The flames recede.

It's raining, again, and their tarp is performing poorly, again. Katara pulls her cloak tighter around her shoulders— the rain itself is familiar and comforting, but the bone numbing dreariness is different from the dry ice desert she’d grown up in and she can’t quite shake its chill.

"Aren't they tired of war?" she asks.

Zuko's back is turned to her, barely visible under the mountain of furs he’d buried himself under as soon as they returned to camp. 

"Who?" comes the mumbled response.

"The Fire Nation."

The mass of blankets sighs. "No. Yes. Maybe."

“What is that even supposed to mean?”

There’s more grumbling as Zuko turns himself around in his huddle, scarred eye peeking out. He complains but Katara thinks he's grown to enjoy their conversations, mostly prompted by her boredom. They don't tell you that saboteurs have a lot of down time to kill.

"There are people who get off on the great glory of the Fire Nation because their father and their father's father fought for the cause and it gives them some perverted sense of importance. There are the families who are tired of the war because it's stolen their sons and daughters year after year. And there are those who don't care one way or another as long as they can keep food on the table," he says in a rush, as if he'd practiced this in his head before. "What they don't know is my father doesn't give a shit about any of them."

Katara lets out a low whistle, "They teach the Crown Prince that?" The eye narrows.

"No," he says flatly, "Exile does."

She raises a placating hand, knowing his limit, as he turns back in his cocoon. She dries their patch of forest one last time before climbing into her own bag. She doesn't bother to refill the flask she sleeps with beside her head, there's plenty of water in the ground to pull from if someone stumbled upon them.

She glances over her shoulder. Zuko's breathing has already calmed, his sleeping bag rising and falling steadily. He always was like this, able to calm down as quickly as he fired up and meditate his frustrations away. 

_"Control is the key to firebending, Katara," he told her._

Smug bastard.

She tosses and turns in her sleeping bag, still keyed up. Her brain can't quiet itself on nights like these, swinging wildly from anxiety to fear to determination. The surf stays rough, even after a storm has passed.

"Zuko?" she whispers to the forest ahead of her. 

"Yes?" comes the tired response behind her.

"What would you do? If you were Fire Lord?"

"I don't know,” he says after a long moment, an edge to his voice that says he never wanted to consider the prospect. “But I think technically you defeated Azula,” he adds wryly, “that means the crown's yours.”

"Fire Lord Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, I could get used to that."

Zuko’s laugh is quick but warm, and the sound soothes her frayed nerves. Her past self would laugh to think she considers the Fire Nation Prince a comforting presence rather than a threatening one. She turns her back to him every night and knows he won't stab her in it.

“Me too. Try to get some sleep Katara.”

She rolls her eyes and settles back into her sleeping bag, drifting off to Zuko's even breathing as she lets the image settle in her mind's eye. 

Her coronation, the flame shaped crown of the Fire Nation nestled against beaded hair, the long robes of the Fire Lord draped over a dress spun in Water Tribe colors. Elaborate jewelry of bone and silver mixing with the warm gold sun flooding the scene. Her mother’s necklace proudly at her throat, the former Crown Prince at her right hand. Aang, alive and well, a fully realized Avatar alongside her. An adoring crowd in the same courtyard they claimed victory, opportunity palpable—reparations to the other nations, overhauling the education system, environmentally friendly manufacturing.

The picture quickly disintegrates into another, the courtyard falling away stone by stone beneath her feet. Aang fades into dust, and the crowd twists and blurs into unidentifiable masses of soldiers in the streets of the Fire Nation capital far below her. 

She wears a crown of silver and dress of deep blues and greys, sharp lines cutting a harsh silhouette against the dark clouds as she steps out onto the balcony, her mother's last cry ringing in her ears. Just beyond the doorway, a shaggy hair man with sharp eyes waits, eternally patient, for a decision.

She was weak when she faced Yon Rha to avenge her mother's death. She will not be weak now. An eye for an eye. Every loss hums through her blood and waves hover around the step edges of the caldera. She breathes deeply. 

Waits.

The city floods.

The man in the doorway steps out onto the balcony, face neutral to the destruction below, a flame of gold offered like a sacrifice. She picks it up and it crumbles, dust torn from her hands by howling winds. A chorus sings amongst the drowning men:

"Lady Revenge, Queen of the Ashes. Fire Lord Katara of the Southern Water Tribe."

She should feel scared, horrified but the vision of her dressed in moonlight _smiles._

Katara startles awake, eyes blinking into the darkness. Her heart pounds and she's not sure what scares her more— the nightmare or that it hadn't seemed like a nightmare at all. 

//

Everywhere else, they whisper about spirits out for retribution. Yin and yang, seeking to restore balance where it's been disrupted. The Avatar was dead but the spirits would have their day. They hadn't disappeared, they were patient. The pamphlets in the village squares called for the heads of a prince and a peasant but the elders knew it was the shadows themselves wreaking havoc upon their nation. 

Madness they whispered, infected the Royal family. Madness extinguished the light, and madness would be overtaken by the very darkness it sought to control.

You can't control the spirits, it was folly to think otherwise.

"Be careful my child, it's so late to be out like this."

The old woman startles her and she clutches her ill-gotten bag of groceries closer to her chest. 

"W-why is that grandmother?" she asks deferentially, scanning for the village constable. She told Zuko she could handle the food run, no reason for him to risk showing his face unnecessarily— his scar is more identifiable than her skin, especially the further south they go. Even still— the last thing she needs is to be locked in a village jail over something as small as stealing.

The elderly woman steps off the stoop of her home, limping closer and in the day's fading light Katara sees her eyes are clouded, not quite focusing on her face. 

"The spirits my dear, they're coming here, they come at night. They break things in the dark, they want to ruin us." she rasps. 

Katara relaxes a fraction, "What do these spirits look like?"

"They're shadows dear, they'll get you if you're not careful."

A grin spreads slowly across her face, satisfaction seeping through her at the older woman's fear. "Don't worry ma'am, I'm not afraid of things that go bump in the dark."

//

"C'mon kid!" Toph hisses through the narrow opening. Her concerns were two-fold. One, someone was coming and either their gait is unnaturally heavy or they aren't going to be the friendliest. Two, if they don't leave soon they're going to be late back to the farm and blow the cover story Sokka built for them.

Actually make that three-fold— if either of the first two things happen Esho is going to kill her.

A pair of feet nudge her as Rih wriggles out of the small hole. "Got it, Miss Toph!"

"For the last time you call me Miss again I will dangle you off a cliff."

"There's no cliffs near here, Miss Toph."

Little urchin.

She quietly seals the hole into the foundry, relieving Rih of poached ore. "Not bad," she tells him as she presses it between her hands. "Here, pull up a leg."

She winds the thin metal up the kid's shins to just below her knee, repeating the process on her own legs. The ore divides evenly between them— despite the six years she has on him, he's nearly the same height.

They make it back to the borrowed cart just as the footsteps draw near. 

"You shouldn't leave your animals unattended, there are many desperate people in these parts nowadays," a nasally voice warns. Toph resists the urge for wisecrack. The port customs officer wasn't well known for his humor.

"You're right sir! I'm sorry, I really had to use the bathroom and I can't leave my sister alone!" Rih lies immediately, clutching at her arm as if to support her. "She's blind, you see." he adds.

_A little overkill, kid._

"Is there anything we're missing, sir?" she asks with fake concern. "We were told we could park here no problem, we were only gone a moment!" she says, turning toward him with a trembling lip. She can hear in his sharply drawn breath the moment he gets a good look at her face.

People always had treated her differently for being blind that was nothing new. But by all accounts, the mask of pinched skin that stopped just above the tip of her nose was pretty gnarly. 

_"Wicked!" Rih called it, when she first took off the bandages in the tent to the horror of his mother._

_"It is pretty badass, Toph," Sokka had added approvingly, earning an audible smack from Suki begging him to please, please watch the language around the literal only child present._

"Um, no ma'am, miss! Many apologies, I don't mean to hold up you and your brother. Carry on!"

She lets Rih pretend to fuss over helping her into the cart, careful to keep her pant legs from riding up. She waits until they're far from the ports to reshape the metal into long rods, tucking them alongside the stack of wooden beams they'd "picked up".

It's dusk when they make it back to camp and Toph shoos Rih away back to the village with directions to sprint— the customs official had made them late and she knows she'll hear about it tomorrow.

She opens the earth beneath their tent, carefully crawling down the stairs to the storage room. She leaves the rods alongside the rest of their pilfered stash. Most of it is old farm equipment, corroded metal that would otherwise need a forge. But who needs a forge when they have her?

She feels for the fail safe— a deeper cavern beneath that the storage room can collapse into should any soldiers come snooping. Wan had worked to expand it while she took Rih into town, the only other self identified earthbender she'd met since the day of the comet. He was no prodigy by any means, but was open to be taught by a 16 year old girl, which is more than she could say for most people she met so he got extra points for that alone.

Satisfied with the stability of it, she climbs out, sealing the earth back into the rolling landscape. She's now _very_ late for dinner at the farmhouse.

A weight lands on the soft ground just north of the hole and she whirls, sending a small berm up to trip the intruder. The footsteps skip gently to the side, expecting the outburst.

Well, shit.

"He is _ten_ Toph!" Suki says, frustration evident.

"Where were you standing?"

"On your 'newly purchased' goods, which by the way don't look like fresh cut planks in the slightest."

"Sokka said they were fine," she grumbles.

"Don't worry, I'm going to talk to him too."

"You're not our mom, Suki."

"No I'm not but Esho was worried sick! I don't care what idiotic risks you take but you can't drag Rih into your schemes."

"Spirits, Sugar Queen you sound like Katara!"

"I hope so! He's TEN Toph!"

"So? I was twelve when I left home, you started training at, what? Eight? They knew they were joining the resistance and I needed the help."

Suki growls, "I thought we agreed we wouldn't turn any kids into us!"

"Yeah, well, plans change."

"Toph..."

"We're not doing anything! We're stealing scrap metal which is only useful because of me, by the way, and waiting? For what? It's been nearly a year! You and Sokka mapped out this great resistance plan all by yourselves without me and now I'm doing all the work while you play house—"

"That's not fair, we've been training—"

"For WHAT?"

"The right moment," Suki says weakly.

"That's ostrich-horse shit and you know it. There's never going to be a right moment! You know it and Sokka knows it, the difference is he's trying to do something."

"I'm trying to make sure you don't end up in prison, or worse!"

"You're being dramatic," she scoffs, turning toward the farmhouse. Suki grabs her by the arm, holding tight when she tries to shake the older girl off.

"I know you think I'm the new prissy pants," she says, voice so low and deadly serious that Toph stops struggling, "But I've spent time in a Fire Nation prison, months, and I promise you. I'm not being dramatic. I'm trying to protect you, and Sokka, and everyone else. And if you prevent me from doing that, I will never forgive you."

//

"Damn them all," Zuko swears, ripping the dark scarf off his face.

Not that things had been going particularly well for them, but their growing notoriety is causing growing problems. 

They'd cased another factory— a textile mill so small it shouldn't have been worth their attention and found a cohort of soldiers already watching the perimeter. That makes the last five— three weeks of travel and energy wasted on nothing.

"Shouldn't this be a good thing?" Katara asks unwinding her arm wraps by the fire while he paced, "We're a serious threat." 

"Yeah, and they're anticipating our next moves. It's only a matter of time before they narrow in on us and personally, I think my sister would be happy with my head on a pike."

Katara rolls her eyes, rising to her feet in one smooth roll and placing her hands on his shoulders.

"Relax."

"I am relaxed! I'm just trying to survive another day," he snaps, pushing her hands away.

"So am I," she retorts and honestly? He's not so sure about that one. Sometimes it feels like she has a death wish, taking bigger risks with each raid. She's always looking for more— more destruction, closer scouting, last minute getaways. She trusts her bending in a way he can't fathom, as if it's a physical part of her rather than a spiritual one. He's starting to think the old woman got to her head and maybe she really believes she's as indestructible as the spirits. "Maybe we just need to change out tactics."

"To what? We can't head much farther south without hitting the capital. We could go west I suppose, but that's mostly agricultural..."

"What about our targets?"

"You've already thought about this," he accuses, receiving a shrug in response. 

"I was thinking about survivors."

He sighs, "Katara, we've talked about this.The likelihood anyone who was in the Earth King—"

"I'm not talking about them," she says quickly, cutting him off. "I was thinking about my father, and the other Water Tribe warriors. Prisoners of war."

Oh, she definitely has a death wish. And the worst part, he knows exactly what that feels like and he'd be lying if he didn't still feel the same burn occasionally, but—

"No."

"Zuko—"

"I'm not going on another prison break! I barely made it out of the Boiling Rock alive the first time."

"They might not even be holding war prisoners there anymore, after your little escapade. We start somewhere on the mainland, find out where they might be. Who knows, maybe we'll find out where they keep political prisoners, like Mai would probably be?"

She might as well have stabbed him in the stomach and twisted the knife deep. He knows, exactly, where Mai likely is, and the idea of chained in some miserable place haunts his dreams. Betraying Azula the crown princess was a cardinal sin, but Azula the Fire Lord? No amount of family connections could save you then.

"Don't you trust me?" she needles.

He does, despite the psychological bribery. He's realized he trusts more than he anticipated. He'd been so set on gaining her trust in the beginning he can't even parse when he decided to fully lean his own into her. Intellectually he knows that's why they fight so well together, why they've survived thus far. She's become his talisman. She's trust and safety and _redemption._ He knows that's a lot to pin on a person but he does anyway— she's the only hope he's got left.

Even at her most wild.

"You're a bitch, you know that?"

She crosses her eyebrows, eyebrow cocked. "Oh I'm aware. Toph always said guys don't like that."

He decides on self-preservation and keeps his mouth shut.

//

He can't stop thinking about Jet.

Jet, of course, is dead. He went crazy and was crushed by a rock and that may or may not have been Sokka's fault, distantly. If he let him flood that Fire Nation town would he ever have gotten captured by the Dai Li?

Jet's death though isn't what bothers him, however crass that may be. What bothers him, increasingly, is the idea that just maybe, Jet had it right.

Suki's still furious with him for covering for Toph and Toph's mad at him for not sticking up for her, when she's the only reason he has a plan in the first place so he's been trying to find as much time as possible alone.

He knows they're both right, they need to be unimpeachable but being holier than thou doesn't really get them anywhere. What he can't figure out is where is that line?

So, Jet.

Sokka likes to believe flooding innocent civilians is still his limit but right now he can't even get near enough to the Fire Nation to cause any harm to civilians or otherwise. Not to mention the hazard of running a resistance ring in your own, newfound community is that disrupting anything is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Interrupt communications? Farmers can't sell their grain widely. Destroy the port? Supplies don't make it to town. Maybe Jet's right and the ends will justify the means but that's not helpful if they can't survive the means.

He's not going to kill civilians but success means audacity. And burying a bunch of metal underground is the opposite of audacious.

There's a week until the anniversary of the comet.

That's plenty of time to act.

Plenty of time to make a splash.

//

"Where do they keep prisoners of war?" he asks lowly, stolen sword at the man's throat. He can feel Katara pacing behind him, watching the man impassively. The warden is a young new appointee, only a few older than himself, cut in the cloth of his father's vision for a new world order. What he lacked in experience he made up for in cruelty.

Zuko wasn't unfamiliar with him, or their target— he'd suggested it after all. His brief stint as the prodigal son came in handy; he'd been brought up to speed on his country as it was rather than how he'd left it.

He hadn't liked what he found, obviously. And this warden, this prison and the town surrounding it represented the worst of his father's desires.

_"Tui and La," Katara gasped softly, standing so close behind him he could feel the breath against the shell of his ear. He kept a firm hold on her wrist, the last thing they needed was her savior complex getting them killed._

_The whistles and boos from the street drowned on the clanking of the manacles of the prisoners' feet and hands as they were driven through the sloping street from port to the prison. Rocks and rotten food pelted them, sharp edges catching the already shredded edges of their uniforms._

_Deserters, political prisoners._

_No room for disobedience in the new empire._

_"Sweet spirits," she muttered again, digging her nails into him. "How can they treat their own people like that?" He turned, raising a hand to her mouth, watching her eyes flash in indignation at the intrusion._

_"Be quiet and smile," he hissed, removing his hand to draw his hat lower, "Like the proud Fire Nation woman you are."_

It hadn't gotten any better as they crept through the prison, past rows and rows of cells filled with emaciated men and women. The yard echoed with a cacophony of guards' batons smacking bars, prisoners coughing and crying. 

"Where are they?" he repeats, pushing the tip of the sword forward ever so slightly into the repulsive man's neck. The warden smiles.

"They're not here."

"We're aware," Katara says, confidently walking closer, drawing down her scarf. "But where would they be? Boiling Rock? Perhaps Santan Prison in Eastern Isles?"

The warden seems unfazed, his smile growing broader. "There are no prisoners of war."

"Not the time to be cute, buddy," Zuko warns, watching Katara carefully. He watches the way she paces, like she's dancing. She tilts her chin up toward the warden, exposing the long line of her neck. It's calm and composed and calculated, like she'd been facing Azula.

Suddenly the graceful lines break, her hands claw and Zuko has the wherewithal to pull the sword back as the warden pitches forward, straining for control over his own muscles.

"Where."

His arms snap to his side.

"Are."

For the first time, Zuko sees a flash of fear in the man's eyes. _Good_ , he thinks viciously.

"Those prisoners." she finishes, rage scoring the words as she wrenches his neck to look at her. Her hand relaxes, just so, and the warden gasps.

"There are no prisoners."

"I would suggest you explain, Warden."

The warden snarls, despite his convulsing muscles. "I was a deputy at the Rock, did you know that traitor? The day of Sozin's Comet. Boiling Rock is the closest prison to the Earth Kingdom, we had plenty of prisoners coming in, almost nowhere to put them."

Katara loosens her hold a fraction and the warden rolls his neck to look at Zuko. "I would've made do. I'm very good at my job. But the orders came from on high, the Phoenix King himself! Signed and sealed by Her Royal Highness— the war was over. No war, no prisoners of war. You understand don't you?"

Horror washes over him, and he wills himself to bury the fury deep and keep his sword level and face impassive. The warden tsks.

"You do, of course, but you don't want to share with the room? Everything always falls on me," he mocks, locking eyes with Katara. Dread roils his stomach and Zuko wishes he can somehow block the words; he's more helpless in the face of a verbal attack than lightning jettisoning toward him.

"We needed to ah, liquidate our assets and I do love to be literal. It's a shame there are no waterbenders left in the Southern Tribe, but of course you know that already don't you?"

The warden chokes on the end of his sentence and Katara's chest is heaving. 

"Their leader, I think they called him Chief? He was very stoic though, didn't even scream as he hit the water," the warden spits at her face through the captivity of his own body, hateful eyes watching for her reaction.

The thought of loss isn't new, deep down he'd already laid to rest those he loves. But it was still abstract, no body to bury, no confirmation. And abstraction always allows for a sliver of denial, of hope to shine through.

He sees that light extinguish in Katara's eyes.

She rocks back on her heels, as if punched and her chest contracts as she breathes out a shaky breath.

The reaction is less than a second, her control falters for less than that and she panics, frantically adjusting her stance and clenching her hands but nothing happens.

The warden scrabbles back against his desk, an arm swinging wildly and Katara yelps, clutching at her face. Zuko lunges forward, shooting fire down the length of his weapon between Katara and the warden. It serves the purpose and he blocks the series of punches thrown his way.

The older man pushes his offensive and Zuko backs toward the door. It's been a long time since he'd fought in close combat with firebending and he remembers why it's not conducive to it, every strike just as likely to burn him as his opponent. 

Katara wipes the blood with her hand and it streaks in stripes across her face. _The Painted Lady_ , he thinks, that stupid play leaping to the front of his mind.

Suddenly the warden is yanked back by the neck and for a moment Zuko thinks she's regained her control over bloodbending before he realizes the man had been subdued by his own sweat, pulled by the collar against his desk. The warden shoots flaming daggers at Katara that she evaporates with ease, finally accessing the flask at her hip. Another pass and the water forms to ice, surrounding the warden.

She bares her teeth at him, "You shouldn't have been so smug, because no prisoners means I have no use for you."

"Katara—" Zuko starts, a warning? A plea? He's not sure. But the ice coalesces before he finishes, peppering the warden's torso. Katara turns on her heel flying out of the room without a glance at the man slowly bleeding out on his office floor. Zuko nabs the dagger the warden had used and takes off after her.

Zuko's killed people before, he's aware of that. Directly or indirectly, he's caused death. He's witnessed death. But he's never stared a person in the eye and decided to kill them. Not when trying to capture the Avatar, not even at the final Agni Kai. He hadn't had _any_ plan of what to do with Azula before he cheated.

Not that the warden didn't deserve what ever came to him.

He can see the blood on Katara's hand - her blood- in the low moonlight. He's not worried about it other than it probably stings something fierce but he knows she can heal it quickly — she fell 50 feet and still patched her own wounds. She's tough as steel. 

She looks at him for the first time since they left the office as he's hoisting her back up over the ledge above the drainage pipe they scaled on the way in. She straddles it, reaching down for his hand when the bells start ringing.

The sound startles him — he always expects it in the factories but this was meant to be a stealth mission. The only person who would even know they were there was the warden and he's... obviously not dead yet.

"Shit!"

Katara nearly yanks his arm out of his socket pulling him over the ledge and his messy dismount from the pipe is cushioned at the last moment by the jets of flame he forces from his hands. No use in hiding his bending at this point.

Shouting echoes inside the prison and the parapets light up, revealing both the pair of them in their glow and the thin frames of the bows.

"Shit!" he yells again, "Run!"

He's faster than Katara and keeps checking over his shoulder to make sure she's close on his heels. They're nearly at the small wood that separates the prison from the town below when he turns his head just in time to watch an arrow pin her to the ground, piercing the soft tissue between her shoulder and her chest.

Katara pushes off the ground, scrambling to her feet in a panic, and screams when the arrow tears further.

He rushes to help her behind the nearest tree, frantically pressing his hands to the wound, trying to ignore her whimpers. _Tough as steel, she's fine, she's tough._

"Hey you're okay, you're going to be okay," he whispers, tearing the scarf from his neck and crisscrossing around the arrow shaft poking from her back. His hands are slick with her blood and Katara moans as he loops her good arm around his shoulders. "We can't stay here, okay, we gotta go somewhere safe." She manages a nod, tightening her hold around his neck in assent.

He takes them away from town, to the steep cliffs that lead to the ocean. The wound won't stop bleeding and she stumbles beside him again and again, eyes rolling back in her head. She was going to pass out or bleed out if she couldn't heal the wound but right now, she could barely lift her head, much less bend.

"Just a little farther," he coaxes, now all but dragging her into the nearest cave. The sand is wet beneath his feet and they'll need to move before high tide. But that was a later problem.

He saws through the shaft of the arrow with the pilfered dagger, clamping a hand over her mouth to mute her groans. He leans her back against his chest, her head lolling over his shoulder.

He knows he needs to remove the arrow but he also knows she'll bleed out in seconds if he does. Without a healer, he's nearly out of options. 

Nearly.

"I'm sorry, Katara, I'm sorry," comes the litany from his lips as he pulls out the arrow by the pointed head, quickly clasping his palms over the entrance and exit wounds.

He gags at the smell of burning flesh. Katara bucks forward before stilling, unconscious. 

He lays her head in his lap, brushing the hair away from her face and cleaning up the knife wound the best he can, carding his free hand through her hair, the way he remembers his mom doing when he was upset. Her chest rises and falls shallowly.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did warn it would get darker! 
> 
> Hopefully it's clear by now but this story takes several times jumps-- chapter 2/3 took place in the five months after the comet, this one is nearly a year after the comet.
> 
> (Also oops slowly becoming Katara-centric)
> 
> Originally this fic was heading in a completely different direction until I overhauled with the help of a delightfully moody playlist. Hoping to have updates come a little quicker now, since the end is mostly written.


	5. Interlude: Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsewhere...

"Who knocks at the garden gate?"

"One who has eaten the fruit and tasted it's mysteries."

The door creaks open, cracking the ice on its hinges. The man hobbles over the threshold, leaning heavily on a wooden staff. He blinks rapidly, eyes adjusting to the warm firelight of the small home.

"Guru, we are honored," the general says, offering him a cup of tea and a seat beside the fur lined cot. "I am only sorry it has taken so long."

"It is a long journey from the Eastern Air Temple and the tundra is quite impassable in winter. I admit, I did not think my service would be needed by the time I arrived."

The tone is neutral but the statement is scolding. The Guru sets down his cup, gesturing to the cot. "May I?"

He helps the older man turn the frail boy to his stomach, and the Guru places a gnarled hand at the base of his spine, closing his eyes.

"Don't you think this unnatural?" he asks, eyes still closed. "This is not the way of the spirits. It would be kinder perhaps, to let nature reclaim its own."

"My brother will stop at nothing to destroy the Avatar, believe me when I say this is the kinder outcome. Not only for the boy but for all of us."

"I can only consult on spiritual matters-- politics I must leave to you." The Guru sighs, pulling the furs back over boy's frail shoulders. "His seventh is chakra is locked. Whether he never opened it after we parted ways or it became blocked somehow, I cannot say. But without the connection to the cosmos, he will not recover. But it also," the guru pauses, troubled. "It also means he was not in the Avatar state when you found him like this."

The general grimaces. To have humanity's last hope come in something so ugly.

"I understand your meaning, Guru. And your wisdom on the matter is appreciated."

He offers an understanding smile, "Wisdom and humanity are often two very different thing, General."


	6. The Drawing Board

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One plan pushes ahead while another regroups.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the love/support on the past couple of chapters!
> 
> This chapter more of less immediately follows up chapter four (if you want a refresher) but be prepared for more time jumps in the next couple of chapters!

It’s bright behind her eyelids and there's the unmistakable rocking of the ocean under her body.

The air around her feels cool but her body feel slike it’s burning from the inside out.

“Woah, you’re safe okay, just a little longer. I think.”

The voice above her sounds so concerned and she feels like she should know it.

She forces her eyes to crack and the world is brighter than before, pale yellow and blue skies. 

Perhaps it’s not the ocean beneath her but the sky.

The sky.

“Aang? Aang?”

//

She knows eavesdropping is wrong but still, how are they so unaware of their surroundings?

She reasons she would've made her presence known but Suki and Sokka were already shouting at each other when she'd come up from the storage room and she wasn't about to interrupt a lover's quarrel. 

Plus, they were shouting about her.

"When were you going to tell me?"

"Tomorrow, at the meeting!"

"Why don't you trust me? You talk late into the night with Jingyi, you spend most mornings at Gao's shop, you send Toph on secret missions with children when she's the one who's mostly likely to get us all killed with one misplaced boulder!"

"Lay off her, why don't you? We're putting plans in motion—"

"I know the plans, Sokka! I helped write the plans!"

"And yet you're still acting like some lily-livered civilian! Everything we want to do scares you!

"I just want to protect everyone! Do you understand how fragile our foothold here is? A hair out of line and we not only out ourselves but bring down every single person we've dragged into this."

"Yes, and I thought you of all people would understand necessary risks," Sokka spits.

Toph winces, slowly backing away from the tent.

"Massaging your ego isn't a necessary risk," Suki fires back.

"My ego?" he asks incredulously. "This is about fighting back. What would you have us do? Buy a farm? Settle down? I thought I was dating a warrior!"

Oh Sokka, Toph thinks, you absolute imbecile.

A feeling suspiciously like guilt begins to gnaw at her conscious. Maybe she'd been too harsh toward Suki. She was the one after all, who cared for Toph's burn and Sokka's leg and had gotten them further and further south. She'd gotten them past the checkpoint, she'd convinced the farmer's daughter, to let them amass an armory on her land. Sokka and Toph had befriended Wan and Lem but Suki had found everyone else.

She was as scared as the rest of them, but she was in touch enough with her feelings not to mask it with bravado and bluster. 

"And I thought I was dating a good man," Suki's voice cracks with anger. "I think it's best if I stay with Esho. I'll see you tomorrow for the meeting," she finishes stiffly, shoving open tent flap. Toph feels Sokka hesitates, heart pounding, before following her outside.

"Suki wait! Suki!" he shouts. Suki picks up her pace toward the village, not turning back around. 

Sokka kicks at the earth, cursing violently before storming back into the tent. Toph sinks back into the shadows, waiting for Sokka to fall asleep before slipping inside.

By the time his breathing steadies, she can feel the first warmth of the morning sun dusting her legs.

// 

“Aang?” Katara mutters, shifting restlessly on her mat.

Neither the cauterized wound in her shoulder or the messily stitched gash across her cheek were infected, but her body still burned with fever and she drifted in and out of consciousness, begging for people who weren't there.

Today it was Aang again. Sometimes it was Sokka and her father. Occasionally Toph or Suki. Less frequently, her mother, but those times scared him—she would curl in on herself, clutching the necklace at her throat and crying at some danger unseen.

(Once she’d called his name in her fevered sleep and he couldn't help but wonder if he would call for her too, in the throes of delirium.)

Uncle would call it a sickness of the soul, like Zuko had suffered in Ba Sing Se. The body at war with the mind, the mind at war with itself. Metamorphosis, he'd called it.

Zuko can't imagine some battle between good and evil raging within Katara. She's a far better person than he was— than he is. She's too practical, too self aware for an existential conflict to brew unwittingly.

The voice that sounds like his uncle chastises him: _It's not fair to judge the woman she is because of the girl you thought she was, Zuko._

He's thought about opening the water from the spirit oasis, one of the few precious possessions he'd risked going back for that night, when he'd left her barely breathing in a damp cave to steal some poor sod's fishing boat. But he doesn't know if it's the water or the healer that makes the difference and besides, he doesn’t have the best credit with Tui or La. 

So instead he sits vigil, praying to whatever other deity who's good graces he may still be in to pull her through the other side.

None seem to be listening, and yeah, he probably deserves that.

He wants to be angry— he’s tried his best to atone for his mistakes, can they cut him a break for once in his life?— but he's just so damn tired. Tired of running and striking fruitless blows against inevitability of his shameful lineage.

He tucks a ball of fisherman's netting under his head and curls up on the shack's floor, watching Katara's stuttered breathing across the dying embers of his fire. His back is to the door and he forces himself to ignore the alarm bells ringing at the vulnerability. If someone finds them they're screwed anyway, it’s not like he's not going to leave her behind, not after everything they’ve gone through. So he slams his eyes closed, wills himself to relax, and counts all the types of tea in his uncle's shop until his breath slows to match hers and exhaustion takes over.

//

She’s never been to either the North or South pole but she imagines it feels something like this meeting.

Icy doesn't even begin to cover it. 

Sokka and Suki have sat as far away from one another as possible in their humble abode and Suki hasn't said so much as a word beyond hello to everyone. Sokka is floundering as he lays out their goals for the next day, the breaks in his explanation clearly meant to be filled by Suki.

"Right. As I was saying, phase one isn't over yet, we still are going to keep stocking up on supplies but we're going to start phase two, which I get sounds more aggressive than it is with this plan but I promise, it's not irrational—"

She can't handle this anymore. "What our fearless leader here means to say is," she butts in and she can feel Sokka's visceral relief. "We need one good strike to get us in and then we'll be able to control the information flow along the entire coast."

It feels disingenuous for her, of all people, to be advocating a strategic plan and based on the group's murmuring, she's not alone in that thought. Sokka, at least, seems grateful.

"Right! Wan is going to hit the port first, borrowing a new-fangled fishing boat from our upstanding Fire Nation citizen, thank you Ariza."

"Long live the Phoenix King," she responds dryly, prompting laughter throughout the tent. 

"The thing about new technology for us poor, simple farmer folk—"  
  
"Watch it," Jiangyi warns.

"—is what the soldiers will assume," Sokka continues pointedly. "But the thing about new technology is that one wrong move and it can quickly go up in smoke, which is exactly what will happen just before noon, on the dock nearest the customs office. We're counting on the officers stationed there to still be somewhat jumpy after everything going on back home and assume an attack and rush to find the perpetrator, one sorrowful and distraught Wan."

"Madam Ariza is a scary woman, don't want to upset her," Wan says dramatically, earning a swat from the older woman.

"In the meantime, Jiangyi, Toph, Suki and Rih will also be in the port, ostensibly to pick up more feed. The wheel of the carriage will conveniently break just about here," he says, whacking the ground in front of him, "the customs house. Jingyi will go for 'help' while Suki and Toph will disappear beneath the building, using the commotion from the explosion to disguise the initial earthbending and bing bam boom, that gets us a permanent path in and hopefully, an official Fire Nation seal." 

"So this is the 'right moment' we've been waiting for?" Lem asks, clearly unimpressed.

"Er, no," Sokka admits. "But information can be just as dangerous as an explosion if you can capture it. Without it, we're blind."

Toph coughs meaningfully.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that!" he adds hastily. 

She laughs, "Just messing with ya. We got it— create a disturbance, steal from the Fire Nation, earthbend in public and don't get arrested. What could go wrong?"

//

She's in the courtyard again, dressed in blue and grey with a crescent shaped crown adorning her hair. 

The world is underwater, unidentifiable bloated faces floating past her. The warden rests against the same stone where Azula nearly killed Zuko. Angry, bloody punctures pin him there, blood swirling in ribbons around him.

Bells toll, somewhere above the flood. The sound should be distorted but the chime is as crystal as the voices whispering to her.

"You're going to be okay," her mother promises, stroking her hair.

"You're safe here," he father adds, gently holding her hand, blocking the warden from her view.

_How do you know?_ she wants to ask. The question is on the tip of her tongue but she doesn't want to let her parents go, wants to just sit here and to commit their faces to memory, but curiosity gets the better of her:

"How—"

The water gurgles around her, draining through the stones as if someone pulled the stopper and her parents disappear before she can cry out for them. Sun beats down on the drying stones and she stands, dusting off the long black and red robes and fluffing the pale blue skirts beneath.

"It's going to be okay."

Her heart catches in her throat. "Aang—" she whispers, reaching toward him. He looks older than she remembers him, dressed in soft yellows and glowing white, a wooden medallion hanging proudly against his chest. 

"You're going to be fine now," he promises. The stones begin to shake and fall away. 

“No! Wait! Take me with you!” she begs as Aang begins to fades away in the crackling light. She claws hopelessly at the plummeting pavement, watching Aang walk into the embrace of three figures in the distance. But no amount of effort stops her falling into the abyss below as the last of the courtyard collapses.

She lands on a worn wood floor, a balcony just beyond the double doors. She hesitates, scared to look into her hands and see the golden flame falling to ash. Scared to see her self satisfied smile. But when she drums up the courage she only sees clothes in earthen tones- greens and blues and browns. Her hair hangs freely around her shoulders, rippling in the gentle breeze. The view through the doors looks like sunset, not the eye of the storm.

"C'mon Katara," a voice calls through the open doors. She steps carefully, wood soft against her bare feet. She reaches to take the pro-offered the hand, balking as the light catches her red palms.

She panics. Bloody hands— no, too pale for blood. She inhales deeply, turning her wrist. The red is earthen, like her clothes. Clay dye. 

"That's it, I got you."

Zuko stands beside her on the rickety balcony, gesturing to the expanse of forest before them. He's dressed in the same warm red as her hands, long hair tied neatly into a topknot without a crown in sight. She breathes in deeply and can smell salty ocean air. She feels a sense of purpose, shoulder to shoulder with Zuko. Freer and untethered. She racks her brain for what tied her back before but comes up empty. Zuko looks down at her, smirk on his lips and as he turns she notices his eyes— matching and unscarred.

_"Katara."_

She gasps, trying to sit up only to be gently pushed back. She looks up into a mess of black fringe dusting a furrowed brow.

"Thank Agni," Zuko swears. Katara slowly registers her surroundings— the muggy summer air that can only be somewhere in the Fire Nation. The ache in her shoulder and tight, itchy skin on her face. She's only dressed in her wraps across her torso but her legs are tangled in what she assumes must be Zuko's cloak, because he sits cross-legged near her head in the same loose fitting shirt he'd worn the day of the Agni Kai, a deep dark circle framing his unscarred eye.

"Try and breathe, you're fine, we're safe okay? I got you," he says like a mantra, propping her head up with a bundle of rope. "Here."

She takes a tentative sip from the cup he offers before draining it, surprised by her own thirst. "How long have we been here?" she croaks, gesturing to what appears to be some sort of storage room.

"The prison was about a week ago. I ah, borrowed a boat. You were pretty out of it but you seemed to be getting better yesterday. Honestly, I think it was the bells that finally brought you back from wherever you."

So that wasn't just in her dream. Her next question is what he meant by _wherever you were_ but she'd never told him about that first dream, and doesn’t plan on explaining this one either. So instead she asks:

"Bells?"

Zuko frowns, looking down at his hands. "I think the village nearby was celebrating the anniversary. Of the comet."

The anniversary. 

A year of terror and misery and sadness. A year of punching up, trying to feel some sense of relief and closure and ending up half dead for their efforts. The only moment of peace she can think of is the first months spent ignoring the world around them.

Maybe that was cowardice. But maybe it was self-preservation.

"Help me to the water."

"I don't know if that's—" he starts before catching her glare. "Fine, whatever you're the doctor."

The briny air is refreshing as they limp to the water's edge. The sun refracts off the the calm waters as it dips below the horizon, sending shimmers across the expanse. She lets the gently waves hit her feet.

"Do you bury your dead in the Fire Nation?"

"No, we burn them."

"We bury ours at sea," she tells him, reaching for the closest piece of driftwood and the sharpest shell she can find. "I think— I want to bury my dead. I can't— I can't be the person I need to be with my ghosts controlling me. This," she says, gesturing at her disheveled state and his evident exhaustion, "all happened because I let my weaknesses rule me."

He's watching her carefully, searching her face so intently she wants to turn away. She realizes she's bracing herself for him to agree with her, to blame her, but that blow never comes.

“It wasn’t weakness.”

“If I had just been able to hold him longer—“

“The warden was a psychopath promoted by Azula, who’s her own special brand of fiendish. You faltered with a technique you used what, only three times before? Even the prodigies of the world need to practice.”

A technique he calls it, as if it’s that simple.

“I’m hardly a prodigy.”

“False humility doesn’t suit you,” he tells her frankly. She ignores him. 

“Plus I’ve only been able to bloodbend in moments of extreme fear or rage. It’s needs the kind of control I can’t maintain under that kind of emotion,” she says, all the frustration of the their time in the prison boiling up.

“Then I’ll help you. I keep telling you, firebending is all self control— I can definitely teach you that.”

She can’t help the harsh laugh that escapes her. “And then what’s your plan Sifu Zuko?” she asks mockingly. “Let me slow your veins and hope I don’t accidentally kill you in the process?”

“Yes,” he says immediately.

“Zuko..."

A long silence passes between them. He won't look in her direction, eyes fixed on the horizon. Finally, he lets out a deep sigh.

"I thought you were going to die in my arms," he whispers, expression pained, as if he was telling a secret he wasn't meant to share. "There was so much blood—you collapsed on me, you were delirious and begging for everyone," he shudders slightly. _Wherever you were_ , he'd said. “We’re the only ones left. I’m not being melodramatic when I say you’re, quite literally, all I have left in the world. So if letting you toy with my blood means I won’t be coated in yours again, I’ll do it. I’m sick and tired of losing friends.”

The statement is final and intense, broaching no argument. It’s the kind of foolhardy determination that defines him, defiant in the face of something as immutable as death.

(Hypocrite, her self conscious mocks)

_You’re a good man_ , she’d told him. _Far better a person than me_ , is what she didn’t say.

She reaches a hand across the gravelly sand between them, resting it on top of his, ignoring his flinch. 

“Look at me.”

He doesn’t full turn, just gives a sidelong glance.

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm harder to kill than that. Okay?"

Zuko chokes out a laugh. "Yeah, okay. Okay," he repeats, disentangling their hands and finding a shell of his own, threading it absently through his fingers. "Burying you said?"

"You don't have to..." she says warily, now feeling presumptive in assuming he would want to leave his own past behind.

"No, you're right. Not about it being a weakness. Loving people isn't weakness, if I've learned anything it's that. But maybe it's time to let their memories go in peace." 

They scratch the names into the driftwood one by one, in silence. Zuko lights them aflame and she pushes them gently out to sea, the tame movement of the tides the most her body can manage. First their parents, Iroh, Toph. They write Sokka and Suki's names together. 

She draws the delicate swirls of the Air Nomads next to Aang's name, hand shaking as she passes it to Zuko.

"Are you sure?"

She nods and pushes his small bit of wood out past the break.

"Did you love him?" he asks softly, watching the last two flames float in the distance. 

"I think I could have," she answers honestly, thumbing the stone on her necklace as Aang's flame dies out on the horizon. She would have, she thinks to herself. But it's a possibility she'll never be able to explore an she can't torture herself with possibilities.

"Did you love her?" she asks in return, as the second flame consumes the token for Mai. Zuko's arms are crossed, wrapped tightly around his own torso as if holding himself up. 

"Once."

//

Surprisingly, not much goes majorly wrong during the operation.

The explosion destroys the boat and the pier and Wan is briefly detained until soldiers find Ariza, who must have given the performance of a lifetime because she not only buys them more time but gets Wan out of jail before the authorities can even process him in.

Meanwhile, the customs house is old and mostly stone and tight packed dirt—clearly built by and for earthbenders. A playground by Toph's standards. It's more detailed work than she prefers, opening up a deep tunnel and stable gaps in the walls but there's no metal and she barely breaks a sweat. 

Suki scrambles up through the walls, dropping in and out of the communications center, emptied in the commotion outside, with ease. 

"Got it," she whispers when she lands back softly by Toph on the lower floor. It's the most she said to her since before her and Sokka's fight.

Toph can't stand it. She can't stand Sokka's grumpiness or Suki's silence. She knows they're not alone anymore, that she has the rest of fledgling resistance to talk to and lean on but they're just friends-- Sokka and Suki are family, and unless they can somehow barge into the Fire Nation and drag Katara and Zuko back home they're the only family she's got left.

And she doesn't know how to fix it. 

Katara (and Aang, the peacemaker, but Aang's gone and isn't that why they've ended up the way they have?) would make them sit and talk about their feelings but that's never been Toph's style. Zuko represses most of his emotions, so she dismisses his opinion out of hand. Normally she would suggest they fight it out but honestly, they're liable to actually kill each other or worse— kiss and _make up_ without actually talking to one another.

"Hey!" Suki hisses, snapping Toph back into their current predicament. "I said, I'm heading out. You have 5 minutes before I clear you okay?"

"Got it."

When the knocking above her comes it's late, but it's the agreed upon code. Jiangyi has already replaced the missing bolt from the cart and Rih is bouncing around in the back excitedly. Suki admonishes him to please, please be quiet. Somehow, she seems even more dour than before.

The reason becomes apparent when they arrive back at the farm, the last of the group to arrive.

"Wahoo!" Rih shouts, busting into the tent first. 

"Rih!" his mother scolds lightly, crossing the room to wrap him in a hug.

"You're late," Sokka says, equal parts relief and frustration. Rih, the rascal, pipes up before Toph can fumble for an answer—because truth be told she doesn't know what took so long.

"Miss Suki got a date with a soldier!"

Toph loves the kid, she really does, he reminds her of herself in all the worst ways. But his preferencing of details needs work because she thinks Sokka is going to have a heart attack right then and there.

"Rih, that is not—" Suki starts to defend herself, annoyance evident in her voice.

"It's true! The bastard—"

"Rih!" Esho yelps horrified. Toph considers that maybe there was a point to be made about watching their language. 

"It's what he is mom! Anyway, the _guy_ came snooping around when Miss Toph was still inside and Miss Jiangyi was still pretending to fix the cart and he was all like 'how's a pretty girl like you get stuck doing physical labor, you belong in a palace'," Rih mimics, voice dropping comically deep. 

Sokka retches and Jiangyi grumbles, not for the first time, about putting some respect on her job.

"I—" Suki tries again before getting bulldozed by the kid.

"And Miss Suki said he was such a gentleman and started asking him all these dumb questions about how to fight, which is ridiculous because she can definitely flip him over her shoulder," he notes exasperated. Toph smiles to herself. "And then he asked to see her again and Miss Suki said yes and let him kiss her hand, which is gross because that's how you get cooties, and offered to walk him back to work. And then Toph was able to scoot back out!"

Suki sighs, "That's more or less right, I just wanted him to go away. I did not _let_ him kiss my hand he grabbed it, the leech."

"Well good thing you had such quick thinking," Sokka says stiffly. Next to her, Suki goes rigid. If Toph thought the space between them was cold before, she felt frostbite setting in from it now. "I think, it's been a long day," he says slowly. "We'll debrief later this week?"

The sentence is a question but the room takes it as a statement, filing out of the tent quickly with small congratulations traded among the group. Suki follows Esho and Rih out, needling Rih about his motor mouth.

Ariza's husband, Raza, claps Sokka on the shoulder. "Don't think anything of it son, I promise you greenies love to show of the uniform. Your girl was smart," he assures him.

"She's not mine, she's not a possession," Sokka responds automatically, despite his sullenness.He sounds so pathetic Toph almost wants to give him a hug.

Raza laughs slightly. "Everyone knows, Sokka. But we also know you love each other. You look at her like I look at my wife. You're doing a good thing, don't let something silly come between you."

Sokka thanks him, closing the tent flap behind the older man and flopping onto his bedroll.

She might as well try.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

“No.”

//

"Would you have let me heal it?" Katara asks, breaking the comfortable silence of their dinner.

They were still squatting in the rundown fisherman's shack. Katara hadn't yet agreed to his proposed plan and in the meantime, between their stolen fishing boat, a waterbender, and a firebender there really was no better place to camp out. At the very least, their stomachs were full which is more than they could say for a stretch of weeks in the spring.

"Heal what?"

"Your scar," she says gesturing to her own eye, her hand grazing the thin pale line cutting across her dark skin from cheekbone to chin. "In Ba Sing Se."

Zuko pauses, because they've had this argument before when the specter of the crystal cavern was raised, after leaving Appa and before focusing their grief into the first factory strike. Back when they were both scared and frustrated and raw. (They're still frustrated now, but also hardened and resigned.)

_“Are we really doing this again?”_

_“I don’t know, how long is appropriate to forget you hunted us down like rats?”_

_“I have fought by your side for 2 years! I helped free your father and Suki from prison, I begged, literally, on my hands and knees to help train Aang! I nearly died for you!”_

_“But Aang did die! Not nearly, did! Your sister shot him full of lightening because you couldn’t finish finding your moral compass until you had daddy’s approval! He was never the same after Ba Sing Se!”_

_“Are you seriously implying that’s what killed him? A year later? And I didn’t betray you Katara, there was nothing to betray! We shared a five minute conversation with basic human empathy in prison. Aang didn’t die because I betrayed you, Aang died because he was a pacifist child and my father is a psychopath!”_

_“Maybe it runs in the family!”_

_He'd lashed out with a whip of fire and she'd responded with water in kind and they'd fought each other until a significant portion of the forest was destroyed and they'd tired themselves out._

It was the only physical fight they’d had since everything fell apart. And despite the argument, they still had fallen asleep back to back that night, ready to defend the other from enemies unseen.

He doesn't think that's what she's getting at now, their relationship, er, friendship—camaraderie?—had moved well past that. But he's not entirely sure _what_ she's getting at.

"I don't know," he relents, "I think maybe I still felt I deserved it."

"You didn't," she says sharply, "No child deserves to be treated that way! It's..."

"Reprehensible?" he offers, smiling at how quickly she got offended on his behalf.

"I was going to say fucked up, but your fancy words work too," she jokes, flicking water at him when he rolls his eyes.

"Why were you thinking about it?"

She sobers quickly, "I was wondering, if you would let me now?" 

"If this is some weird life debt thing, I've already told you a thousand—"

"It's not! I mean, I do still owe you. But I was thinking if, _if_ , we follow your plan, it might give you a little more freedom."

"Seems like a waste of perfectly good spirit water."

"You're not a waste," she says brow furrowing. For all her own self-deprecation and dark humor, she hates when he does it. He's not unconvinced the impulse comes from a place of her being the only one allowed to shit on her friends rather than one of actual concern.

"But if you don't want me to, I'll respect that and swear I won't bring up again. I don't want you to think I'm trying to change you or anything."

He smiles, "I'm not that vain."

A huff. "Zuko."

"Katara," he teases back. She rolls her eyes, tossing her hands up exasperated. She finally had her normal range of motion back, her left arm properly healed. 

He'd watched her wade into the ocean near midnight, water glowing in a cocoon around her. She claimed it took longer than it should have, with only one good hand but when she made her way to shore the skin he'd messily fused together looked good as new.

_"What about that one," he asked, looking to where the mark from the warden's knife was still visible._

_"Hubris."_

"Okay."

"Okay?" she says, surprised.

"Yes," he says more firmly. "I think one familial scar is enough right?" he jokes darkly.

Katara fetches the flask of spirit water from inside the shack. The sun has dipped below the horizon and an orange shadow casts itself over the beach. She sits behind him, tugging at his shoulders until he leans back, head resting in her lap.

"Are you sure?" she checks, again.

"Yes, positive. Think of it as a belated birthday gift," he quips. Her jaw drops.

"I missed your birthday?! When was it?!"

Really, he should've known she'd fixate on that. "Maybe last week? I've kind of lost track of time."

She tsks, gently tapping his shoulder in reprimand. "Well, then think of this as your gift, clean slate for a new decade."

She adjusts his head, her fingers ghosting over the ruined skin. It sends shivers down his spine. She bends a small portion of the water to wrap around her hand, spreading her palm out over the left half of his face. He lets his eyes slid shut, relaxing into her touch. He can feel the water probing the edges of the years-old injury, as if she was gently poking it.

"It's like a giant knot," she explains, rolling her palm out toward the corner of his eye. The prodding intensifies, almost mildly uncomfortable. "I just need to--"

She makes a minute adjustment and suddenly Zuko gasps, eyes flying open.

"La," Katara whispers, expression stunned. 

_"You dare disrespect me?"_

_"Weak! A disgrace!"_

_"Father's going to be so disappointed Zuzu."_

_"This defiant breath will be your last!"_

_"I'm celebrating being an only child!"_

_Failure. Failure. FAILURE._

He thought he'd long accepted those demons but the pain feels so fresh and he can't help the tears leaking from his eyes. Katara starts to pull her hand away and he grabs her wrist.

"No please," he rasps, "please finish."

Katara grimaces and replaces her cool hand over his face. "I'm almost there, I swear, it'll stop soon."

He sets his jaw, wondering faintly if he should be embarrassed how easily she seems to be able to see his pain. He finds it doesn't bother him. 

He winces at one last sharp tug and then the glowing disappears. "It's not perfect but..." Katara trails off, sitting him up and bending a sheet of ice, "here."

He accepts the makeshift mirror without looking into it. He touches his eye and the skin still feels rough under the pads of his fingers. He breathes deeply, lifting the ice up.

The skin is faintly rough and his eye is still fairly slitted, but the angry red is gone. The last time he'd seen his skin clear had been the morning of that first Agni Kai, his hair drawn back tightly and face still rounded like a child's. 

Now his hair hung messily in his face, his features sharpened with age. He almost doesn't recognize the man he's staring at.

Katara's watching him anxiously, as if he's going to demand she put it back somehow. He relaxes, setting down the ice and sticking out his hand. She takes it, confused.

"Zuko, former crown prince and traitor to his country," he introduces himself, shaking her hand. "Nice to meet you."

She laughs, relieved. "Katara," she says smiling, "Master waterbender"

"You would lead with that," he says, shaking his head. She shrugs. "But really, Katara. Thank you."

"Anything for a friend."


	7. Interlude: Part Two

Winter returns to the tundra with vengeance.  
  
He reheats the cup in his hands, already cooled by the winds outside the hut.

"It's time."

"We'll leave shortly. But I must warn you again that this is a gamble, General Iroh. If we're wrong there's no way we'll make it south before they find the child."

"I've become rather a betting man in my old age," Iroh tells him, sipping the now hot tea.

//

  
The mood inside is quiet and grim. Guru Pathik vacates his seat next to the coat, motioning for Iroh to take it.

"I think my presence might spook him."

Iroh takes the boy's hand in his own. His skin is frail and nearly translucent, like a man Iroh's own age, not a boy of sixteen. He hears the guru speaking to the young healer, who breathes shakily as she places her hands on either side of Aang's head, carefully shaved the night before.

"I wish I could have done more for him," she laments. Aang's breathing increases erratically as the cool glow fades from her hands.

"Some things fall out of our control, my dear."

The Avatar’s erratic breathing continues as his body fights to support him for the first time in years. Iroh fixes his gaze firmly on the wall, unable to stomach watching him struggle. Maybe it was cruel, to have kept him like this.

The smaller hand twitches, just so, beneath his and Iroh squeezes it gently.

"We're here, Avatar Aang."

The healer soaks a cloth, gently dabbing his lips. The boy groans, eyes moving rapidly underneath the lids, fighting to open them. He licks his lips, gasping weakly. Grey eyes crack open, just slightly.

Iroh dims the fires.

"Did we do it," the boys rasps, voice broken from disuse. "Did we win? Is everyone okay? Katara? Sokka and Toph? Zuko? Suki?"

Iroh glances above Aang's head, to where the healer and the guru bear matching frowns. Pathik shakes his head. Iron sighs.

Aang tilts his head every so slightly to watch him, breathing still shallow. The old general rubs circles over the top of the frail boy's hand, fighting to keep his voice steady.

_You deserved so much more than the hand dealt to you._

"Yes, young Avatar," he lies. "You did it. They will be here soon."

The corners of Aang's mouth turn up, a relieved smile calming his features. The grey eyes slide shut again. "That's good," he whispers weakly. "That's good. I'm just going to rest a bit I think, until they come."

"Take all the time you need, you deserve rest."

//

"He has moved on General Iroh.”

The general looks into the blinding wash of white sweeping the plains. His tea has gone cold again but he can’t be bothered to warm it.

“You did him a kindness,” the guru insists. 

“Is it kindness to have acknowledged the inevitable? I’m not sure praise is warranted for what should have been done ages ago.”

The guru doesn’t try to tell him ‘I told you so’, which he selfishly appreciates. 

“You tried not only to save his current life, but his future life as well. That is a kindness.”

His future life. The world’s last hope is an infant, somewhere.

All they can do now is wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks you again for all the comments and kudos!


	8. The Gameplan: Redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New goals are drawn and new plans executed. It goes about as well as the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a DOOZY so thank you all for bearing with me!

The boat rocks with her frustration, disrupting the moon's reflection on the surface of the water. 

"Hey, no, look at me, Katara," Zuko says, grabbing her arms to steady the boat. She wants to shove him in the ocean but his hands are gentle and his expression mild. It's new, the mildness, either a result of their pact or her near death experience she's not sure. It makes him seem more youthful, his face actually reflecting his twenty years.

"You nearly had it," he insists. The half healed skin around his left eye ripples. She's still not used to the new symmetry of his face. Some part of her misses the scar, though she shudders to be reminded of the knotted chi she'd worked through healing it.

"I feel like a monster," she mutters, pulling away from him, sliding off her seat and laying back against the splintering deck. "The, intentionality of it."

It’s an excuse of course, she’d premeditated it before. She’d chosen it with Azula, with the warden. The long crimson string spun with rage— power in her veins to weakness in theirs. 

"You're a survivor,” he corrects her, a touch sharply, the way the old Zuko would. “Without you we'd both be long dead," he says more sincerely, leaning forward over her, his knees bracketing her own. He blows a strand of hair out of his face that immediately flops stubbornly back. 

She crosses her arms over chest, tilting her head enough to look at him peering over her bent knees. She scowls. 

"Then the monster lives inside my skin, coming and going at its own pleasure because when I actually want to do this I can't!"

She could feel it, the energy of Zuko's blood and her own, just below the skin-- so easy, so close-- and the full moon she shouldn't even need coaxing her gently and--

Nothing.

"All the more reason to assert your authority over it then," he says, changing tact. "Conquer the beast."

"You would know all about conquering," she spits. She’s being nasty but her frustration has already won out and she can’t pull it back.

"Taking your anger out on me isn't going to work this time. I'm like a storm," he chides.

"A what?"

"Ah, I once asked the spirits to strike me down so I could bend lightening. Point is, storm didn't listen."

She snorts, curling up to wrap her hands around her knees. Zuko doesn't lean back, comfortable crowding her space with a challenge in his eyes.

She always was too competitive for her own good.

"Fine."

She scoots back, perturbed by the significant increase in chill away from Zuko. Damned furnace. She’d become far too comfortable to having a firebender around, even in the relative warmth of the Fire Nation. The fishing boat’s berth might as well be a sauna every night, leaving Katara to straddle the line between being cool and being indecent.

She closes her eyes, trying to summon her frustrations to the top. It's not how she's supposed to be approaching it but she's craving a win and this feels the fastest route to her goal.

The water calls, faint but there, in Zuko's veins. She draws her arms together, fingers closed, tilts her hand down.

And nothing.

She opens one eye to see Zuko carefully watching his arms, as if he was expecting them to fly away.

"Ugh!"

She tries again, thinking of the prison.

And again, thinking of Azula.

Again, with Ozai.

Again, with the day of the comet firmly in mind.

She unlocks her mental box to think of Aang falling from the air in the crystal catacombs but no matter the strength of the anger associated with the memory, the blood stills flows just out of her grasp.

Zuko reaches out, resting his hands on her knee again. "You're drawing from emotion."

"I know!" she snaps. "Sorry," she apologizes immediately.

"You need to find control elsewhere, reach from a different source."

"Like dragons?" she asks wrly. He shakes his head, taking her hands in his, laying them flat across his warm palms. 

"No dragons or magical koi. But just trust me okay? Close your eyes and breathe," he says. _Meditating,_ she thinks glumly as he continues to talk her through various breathing exercises. She hates meditating.

"You have to actually trust me, Katara."

"I do."

She readjusts her seat and calms her mind, listening to his blood thrum beneath her palms. She shakes loose the ideas of anger and fear and defense. She draws her arms away slowly and purposefully. 

Zuko gasps and her eyes fly open to watch his left hand twitching. She drops her arms immediately.

"Sorry!"

"No, it's fine,” he says eyes wide. "Try again."

His arms jerk sharply upward. His amber eyes look brassy in the silver glow from the moonlight and look at her with something akin to pride and deep relief. 

_'I thought you were going to die in my arms,'_ he'd said. ' _Y_ _ou’re, quite literally, all I have left in the world,'_ he'd admitted. ' _I’m sick and tired of losing friends,'_ he'd whispered. 

Would any of the others have invited her so intimately into their skin? Encouraged her to dominate such an occult skill? She's begun to think his crusade has less about fear of her potential demise rather than his own. There's something always unspoken in his assistance-- _I will not leave you alone, whether I'm there or not._

He draws her out of her analysis with a familiar smugness.

"I told you you could do it."

She smirks, flipping him off with his own hand.

//

"You could just talk to him," Toph suggests as they emerged from the increasingly elaborate tunnel system her and Wan had carved leading to the port. 

She's right, though Suki is loathe to admit it. Since they broke into the customs building, information has come in a flood. She accompanies Toph once a week, in the middle of the night when the sole guard goes on break, to steal the newest messages.

The Fire Nation is nothing if not bureaucratic, keeping copies of incoming messages litter the communications center. The port is apparently too inconsequential to keep outgoing messages, or a constant guard, but even slightly out of date correspondence is more than welcome. 

The Fire Nation occupation is more extensive than they could ever imagine— every port from the North Pole to Whaletail Island under their control. The walls of Ba Sing Se had fallen and the poles were under naval blockade.

 _"Why bother blockading both poles— no offense, Sokka, but isn't the Southern Water Tribe kind of small?" Toph asked, feeling the map he'd drawn into the dirt for her._

 _"Aren't you kind of small?" he snapped._

 _Suki intervened, avoiding Sokka's gaze. "I'm pretty sure water is the next element in the Avatar cycle, Toph."_

 _The earthbender sucked air through her teeth. "All that for a toddler?"_

“Seriously, Suki, we should be celebrating. It’s hard to celebrate when mom and dad are fighting,” Toph says. Suki glares pointlessly at her. 

The batch of correspondence nabbed tonight contained what could generously be described as warnings, less generously the griping of overworked officer. Unrest up north and in Omashu, where the new governor had taken control. Active resistance throughout Ba Sing Se, reports of the remains of the Earth Kingdom army regrouping to the Far East, past the Si Wong desert.

But all are proof they're not alone with their ragtag espionage gang. If they could connect with these other pockets of unrest, they'd have a true resistance network. Exactly what she and Sokka had dreamed up so long ago.

Her heart aches.

She wants to go back to the farm with Toph. She wants crawl into Sokka's bedroll and fall asleep to the sound of Toph's gentle snoring. She wants to stay up late and be one another's sounding boards. She can admit she was wrong. She was, she understands that. 

But.

There's always a but.

And each time she thinks of it the anger and frustration rise unbidden. The argument had been worse than the problem. The argument, now, in her clenching heart, had become the problem. She can't get past the bitter taste left in her mouth, his accusation— _I thought I was dating a warrior._

It was a low blow and it hits its mark.

She can't explain that to Toph, it's not her place to air their dirty laundry.

"Let it be," she says instead, turning toward the village where Esho keeps a bedroll and a warm cup of tea out for her. "I'll see you in the morning."

//

She can tell they're nearing shore when the toucan puffins begin to circle. They can't be that close— she still can't see land and the sulfuric smell hasn't yet drifted out over the water— but it's progress.

(All the ports away from the poles have the same smell of low tide and day old fish, no matter the time of day.)

"Names?" she asks suddenly, turning to Zuko rolling their belongings into the woven bag. They'd changed into their pilfered outfits after the first toucan puffin. She'd traded her hair loops for a Fire Nation topknot and tucked away the blue beads along with her mother's necklace— her last bits of Water Tribe blue— binding them safely to her chest. Her only concession to her heritage was the thin braid she'd woven around the base of her hairdo. If Zuko had a comment, he'd kept it to himself.

"What?"

"You've crafted elaborate back stories for us but plan as introducing yourself to anyone you meet as 'Zuko'? No offense, scar or not I think they'll find it odd some poor fisherman has the crown prince's name."

"Former," Zuko grumbles.

_"Think about it, who would look for two wanted fugitives right under their noses?"_

_"Seems like a risk."_

_He raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her that screamed 'Hypocrite!' "If we drop off the map, we'll be out of sight out of mind," he said._ _"Plus, it's our biggest port city. Even at the height of the war, there's always people from all over. We won't stand out as unusual, even if anyone's still actively looking for us."_

_"You mean I won't."_

_"No, well yes, but I also meant us," he said, flushing slightly. "An unmarried couple traveling together—"_

_"Are you suggesting we're a couple," she teased. He went, if possible, even redder, the rest of his complexion nearly matching his scar, and glanced skyward as if Agni himself would make her stop._

_"No! That's my point. We're not!"_

_He did have a point. She'd love to say that four years of travelling (on the run, let's be honest) had opened her eyes to the wonderful world they lived in but it mostly opened her eyes to a lot of other things._  


_Violence, bigotry, poverty, sexism, to name a few._

_And an unmarried young woman travelling alone with a man, without a chaperone? That would ruffle feathers in more than a few places, not just the Fire Nation. She could_ _hear of all the disapproving tsks from the aunties in Ba Sing Se at the very thought._

_Which was completely unfair, what kind of world was it that a girl couldn't become a saboteur on the run with her male best friend? Backwards, the whole place._

Zuko sighs, finally answering her question. "Lee."

"Lee?" she asks. She pushes her first thought— ' _better than Wang Fire'—_ away. A clean slate they'd sworn. There were only two times: before the comet and after the comet. Before was a closed book. Let the past rest.

"It's a common name," he says shrugging. _There are a million Lee's in the Fire Nation_. No, let it go. "You can go by Kata," he suggests.

It almost sounds like her own name, if you took a sharp blade to the end. It's a harsh vowel on the end— fitting she thinks, for the Fire Nation.

"You don't think anyone will make that connection?"

He smirks at her, "No offense but I don't think anyone has your name in their head, just scary waterbender."

She flicks him with ocean water. "As they should."

//

Toph _cackles_ when she reads her the only new information from their latest grab, one throwaway line in a summary from the capital dated nearly two months prior:

> All prisons and military installations upgraded to high alert. Attempted prison break. 1 KIA. Terrorists still at large.

“One prison break wasn’t enough Sparky?”

Sokka has the same question when she arrives to the farm in the morning, dropping the messages on the floor.

“What’s next, breaking into the royal palace itself?” he asks, shaking his head at the offending piece of paper.

She can't help it. “I’d worry more about your sister than Zuko in that regard. Risky plans seem to run in the family.”

“Suki—"

"I think it I hear Jiangyi calling me!" Toph interrupts loudly, pointedly stomping out the door. "I'll be back don't hold the conversation for my sake!" the girl yells. Suki rolls her eyes at the lack of subtlety. 

Her and Sokka stand in silence for a long moment, both unwilling to make the first move. He's fidgeting uncontrollably. She should have just kept her mouth shut. It's the most time they've spent alone in months. 

“It was a joke,” she says quickly, breaking the stalemate. The annoyance dissipates from his face. “Sometimes a risk is worth it,” she says, the words a flood. "You were right about that."

She expects Sokka to make a joke _I'm always right, Suki!_ She braces herself for it, the flippancy. Instead, he pulls her into a fierce hug, dropping her nearly as quickly when she stiffens beneath his arms. He backs away as though she'd burned him.

"I'm sorry—"

"I know I— what?" she says at the same time.

He runs his hand through his hair, a stressed habit he'd picked up when it had grown long enough. He rarely pulls in back unless he's in the fields with Jiangyi. She wonders if the resemblance to his wolf's tail hurts. 

Sokka makes a noise of frustration. "I miss you. I miss _us._ I hate this," he says gesturing between them. "The not talking. Avoiding each other. Regardless of the plan, I was a jackass to imply you were less of warrior over a strategic difference. It was petty, I know. I don't think that, I could never think that."

_Yeah, you were,_ she thinks immediately. The anger is bubbling just below her heart, eager to escape, only bound to her chest— frustratingly— by longing.

She meets his eyes. "We were both stubborn," she says carefully. The anger _hrrumphs._

"It's why we work so well together," he quips. _There's the Sokka she knows_. His face sobers quickly, "Right?"

Longing strangles the anger, dissolving it slowly. She reaches for his hands and he readily opens them to her. They're rough and calloused like hers, from years of holding a blade and months of farm labor. She runs her thumbs over the outsides and Sokka inclines his head, resting his forehead against hers.

"Right?" he asks again, softer. She squeezes his hands.

"Right," she agrees. 

She can feel the tension drain from his body and is momentarily concerned he might puddle at her feet. But he just opens his arms, inviting her in. 

She takes him up on the invitation, wrapping her arms tightly around his torso. 

"I promise I won't leave you out of loop again," he murmurs into her hair.

She responds into his chest, inhaling deeply, "And I promise to be open to discussion."

"Have you guys kissed and made up yet?!" Toph shouts from outside the tent. Sokka lifts his head to shout back. 

"I thought you were going up to the house?"

There's rustling as the flaps peel back. "You guys have two seconds before this reunion becomes about me and not you two," the earthbender warns. "One."

Suki laughs and Sokka presses a gentle kiss to her forehead.

"Two!"

Toph _launches_ herself at them, knocking the trio of the down in a mess of limbs. 

"Thank spirits! My next plan of action was to lock you guys underground until you worked your shit out."

"Toph?"

"Hmm?"

"Don't you dare ever do that."

"Then don't be a blockhead, Snoozles." 

  
//

The volcanic city looms large over the port, bracketed by the huge military vessels sitting in the harbor and the glinting building tops peeking out from the crater. They leave their small boat tied to the cleats along the public dock and pray no one steals it.

The baskets of fish they (Katara) caught along the way sell quickly and Zuko's thankful for the good omen. Not that he's above procuring money other ways, but it's a sustainable source of income that won't raise eyebrows so long as they go out far enough where Katara can waterbend. Plus, all he has for a weapon right now is the warden's dagger and it's not his preferred way to mug rich old bats. 

He's found them a hot meal and still has plenty of silver pieces left over. Katara had headed deeper into the maze of the lower city, insisting she'd work on shelter. Camping wasn't going to cut it anymore, not on the poorly paved roads of the lower city, not if they wanted to keep their few belongings.

He finally spots her deep in conversation with a graying old woman, bowing deeply as the other woman heads inside and Zuko regrets leaving her to her own devices.

"What are you doing?" he hisses. Katara smirks, grabbing one of the skewers of mystery meat from his hands.

"Finally something other than fish," she says excitedly. "And I found a place to stay."

"We can't stay here!" he exclaims, worriedly watching the long corridor for the matron.

"Why not?" Katara asks, a glint he doesn't like in her eye.

Zuko winces. "She runs a house for ah, disreputable women."

"Well," she says, dragging out the word, not bothering to contain her gleeful expression. "Technically, I am a disreputable woman."

He groans. _Men would be so lucky,_ he thinks darkly.

"An outlaw," Katara continues at a whisper, "A thief, a terrorist. I think we'd fit in just fine. Besides, we're not staying here, we're staying next door. What's the matter? Never spent time in the seedier parts of town? I would think the Crown Prince would have his pick."

Zuko pulls a face. "I was 13 when I was banished," he reminds her.

"Except for those months you returned," she says waggling her eyebrows. He glares. 

"Definitely not then," he shoots back. 

_Mai, threading her fingers through his, kissing the edge of his scar. Mai, whispering terrible, dirty things in his ear while he poured over scrolls in the Royal Library. Mai curled against him on the beach at Ember Island before Azula ruined it._

He shakes away the memories. He'd laid Mai's memory to rest and discounted the rest of his family a long time ago. It was his idea, the clean slate, after Katara had recovered and they’d sent burning wood out to sea. They were going to lay low until they figured out what the hell to do next, with their previous plan of action on hold with the military on high alert. In the meantime, not be ruled by their pasts. They were in the Caldera because of the anonymity of the city. And at least they could keep better track of what was going on in the world— gossip traveled fast in ports, if he’d learned anything in exile, it was that.

But apparently now his plan meant renting a room from a brothel owner.

"It's a good deal, I paid her upfront and I clean for her once a week. And it's the best house in the city," Katara says ignoring his disgusted expression. "Which means, they have quite the elite clientele, all the movers and shakers of the city. Oh honestly, you act like this is the worst the world has to offer."

She's right of course. He begrudgingly tells her as much, rolling his eyes at her satisfied smirk as the Matron returns. 

"Here's the key for you and your...?" she asks Katara, eyebrow raised in Zuko's direction.

"Companion," she says smoothly, finishing the sentence. 

"Mhm," the Matron hums, disbelieving. Zuko scowls. "Then I'll see you in two days time my dear."

The room is little more than an attic, five flights of rickety stairs up and two doors down from the Matron's... place of business.

There's a solitary round window at the far end of the room, with two chipped handles holding the panes closed. He forces one down as Katara enters the room behind him. Half the window opens and it's just enough for him to step through onto the small roof below them.

"Hey, almost like a balcony," he jokes, leaning back onto the windowsill. "C'mon, Katara," he says waving her over. "Come check out the prime real estate."

He half expects her to make a joke— _not all of us grew up in a literal palace, Zuko. Igloos don't have balconies—_ but when he turns back around she's standing in the middle of the empty room looking stricken.

"Balcony," she repeats, watching him warily. She glances at her hands, blink and you miss it quickly, and tightens one in her red skirt.

"Uh, roof really," he amends, concerned at her reaction. "You can see down to the port from here."

Katara shakes her head, coming to peer out the window. He loosens the other handle, pushing the pane inward to give her room. She crawls out next to him, reaching into her bag for the rest of the meat he'd purchased earlier. The sky above the them tints yellow— somewhere behind them on the other side of the volcanic peak the sun had begun to set.

"Well, to a clean slate," she says, holding her skewer aloft like a toasting glass. He taps it with his own.

"A clean slate."

//

_"I still am going to see that solider."  
  
It was a statement not a request. She worried it would topple the fragile forgiveness. Sokka pursed his lips, clearly holding in whatever it was he really wanted to say._

_"It's the perfect distraction, you know it. If it was Toph you would have been bouncing off the walls."_

_Sokka sighed. "Yes, but I don't have to like it."_

_"No, you don't."_

She'd delayed the boy for weeks but he was persistent, nothing but time on his hands while he was stuck— in his words— in the most boring part of the empire.

_Empire_ stuck in her mind, the audacity of the Fire Nation to label their goals so boldly. He'd mentioned it off hand, swearing he could wait until after harvest season if she needed.

_If you only knew,_ she thought, imagining the stash of weapons beneath the earth where she slept, the familiar path to the customs house she took each week. He was so close to excitement and he didn't even know it. 

"You shouldn't worry so much dear," Raza says, stirring her from her glaring at the window. The solider was supposed fetch her from the colonial couple's home. Her cover was effectively being a jack of all trades, allowing her to move between the farm and the port and the village as she pleased. Ironically, the months of avoiding Sokka at Esho's home worked in their favor. 

She worked part of the week on the farm, babysat Rih in the morning, trained to be a lady's maid with Ariza in the evening with hopes of moving to the mainland one day. The Fire Nation did love ambition. She hoped Ariza returned before her date (gag) arrived, to fuss and flatter her in front of him like she was an insipid girl and not someone who could cut his throat without breaking a sweat. 

Everything about their existence was a charade and everyone needed to play their part. It's what continued to stress her about their ongoing info gathering. Even though she now supported it, the somewhat ill-defined operation was still an intricate machine with many moving pieces. If one broke the rest would follow in a disastrous tumble.

She forces the worry from her mind. In a way, it didn't matter, becauseif push came to shove no one would ever doubt she was a warrior. Azula's arrest of her girls and begging at Fire Nation checkpoints were mistakes of the past. She made that commitment to herself while wrapped in Sokka's apology; she wouldn't let the people she protected (loved) down ever again.

Raza offers her a cup of tea she accepts gratefully. "Corporal Taku likely just wants to show off. It's been a game since I was in the Navy, I'm afraid, wooing pretty girls at every port," he tells her with a slight smile of apology at the sexism inherent in the hobby.

"You were in the Fire Navy?" she asks, surprised. She knew Raza and Ariza were from the colonies and she wasn't supposed to dig, tent oath and all, but she can't imagine mild mannered Raza in any military, much less the Fire Nation. He reminds her vaguely of General Iroh, though with less vague proverbs and she thinks choking down a sip, worse tea. 

Of course she probably is just projecting onto any Fire Nation man who doesn't have world domination in his heart. Then again, she did befriend the Crown Prince who burned down her village so, appearances surely are deceiving.

Raza doesn't chastise her for question the way his wife, who worried as much about appearances and her roll in the cog of their cobbled together machine as Suki did, would likely have.

"The took our families too, Suki," he says gravely. "Year after year, they came to their colonies to collect on the promise of being a proud member of the Fire Nation. They promised a good wage, land and glory and when you survived long enough to cash in on that they came for your children."

Suki says nothing, unease rolling off her in waves. If Raza notices he doesn't say. 

"My son would've been nearly thirty years old. He was stationed outside of Ba Sing Se during the seige, in the Crown Prince's regiment," he says and Suki's brow furrows. She was still a child during the first failed seizure of Ba Sing Se, Zuko couldn't have been much older. Then she remembers the family portraits Katara had found on Ember Island. 

" _My cousin," Zuko said, giving a cursory glance to the faded scroll. Suki could see the family resemblance, high cheekbones and narrow noses. "He died when I was young. Azula and I were told it was in battle but my father was declared heir shortly after and sometimes I wonder... " Zuko trailed off. Sokka and Aang looked horrified at the implication. Katara looked furious enough to storm the capital right now and off the Fire Lord herself. Toph, much like Suki herself, seemed unsurprised._

"I thought it'd be safe," Raza said. "Royalty never got their hands dirty. But the whole regiment went down. We found out through the notice posted to the town's temple. A name and a date."

"I'm so sorry Raza, I didn't know."

Raza gives her a watery smile. "Of course not, that was the point. But I tell you this to remind you that this war has taken from those it purports to protect and any way we can end it--"

Raza is cut off by the rattle of the door on its hinges and Ariza rushing in.

"I'm sorry! I was at the jail--"

"Why?!" Suki asks alarmed. Ariza shakes her head.

"Rih got into a fight with some other kids, knocked over some cabbage stand and got caught up in the ruckus. I saw the tail end of it and went to vouch for him. He's home with Esho now. And I," she says, giving Suki a once over, "Am going to fix your hair for your date."

"It's not a date," Suki grumbles, "It's an intelligence operation."

Ariza grins conspiratorially at her. "Oh we're all very aware, dear," she says, deftly twisting Suki's hair into a small knot. Suki narrows her eyes at Raza, who's not quite containing his laughter.

"And what, is that supposed to mean?"

"We're just very glad you and Sokka have made up," he explains, a little too knowing. She scowls.

"I'm going to kill Toph."

//

The idea that they could drift back into blissful ignorance was astoundingly naive. She feels embarrassed for herself any time it comes to mind.

The Caldera makes her itch. The city was supposed to be a fresh start but instead it's grating on them more than living on the run ever had.

Even the freedom of the long days among her element out at sea, ostensibly their profession, can't quell her growing frustration. She knows Zuko is just as twitchy as she is, grumpier than normal, constantly turning his head down in a crowd to guard a scar that no longer exists. 

They'd traded anonymity for the constant barrage of reminders of the way the rest of the world continued to lurch in the direction of misery of which they were intimately familiar. It was the sight of the navy outside their window, spewing dark smoke from their chimneys. The splendor and riches of the inner city gleaming from the crater above, casting its glow over the dirty streets and worn people at the base of the mountain. The shiny boots and pointed armor of the officers streaming in and out of the Matron's house.

_"Ugh," one of the girls complained to her friends in the morning as Katara swept the house. "I have the admiral again. He's such a bore, insists on calling me his rare lotus blossom." The other girls gagged, laughter mixing with the dramatics. The storyteller grinned, playing to her audience._

_"Told me he can't wait to 'conquer the Earth Kingdom' tonight." The retching continued._

_"At least he pays, the Governor is cheap and an ass," one of the older women grumbled. She lowered her voice in a mockery of the man. "'A firm hand is required for ruling, my sweet.' I want to tell him where he can shove that firm hand."_

_Katara's hand tightened on the broom. "Ash banana peels," she interrupted. The woman, Mika, looked up surprised. "For bruises, makes them fade faster," she explained._

_"Thanks, Kata!" Ren, the storyteller said, offering a smile._

_"Our conversations are confidential," Mika reminded her pointedly. Ren smacks her arm._

_"She knows!"_

_"I'm just saying the last thing we need is an inspection. Not after Lee."_

_Stupidly, Katara's heart froze with fear. But she knew it wasn't, couldn't, be Zuko._

_(Lee it turned out, was in fact a very common name.)_

_"What happened to him?" she asked._

_"He had the best noodle shop on the street!" Ren said wistfully, "And was a great forger, got all the new girls papers in their chosen names you know? But the governor sent inspectors through the neighborhood and the shop's been closed since."_

It's not just close to home (home, when had she started thinking of their room as that? It's only admirable quality was it's relative safety for her and Zuko) but throughout the city, similar murmurings. She hears them at the market, further up the mountain, where she has to wear her finest clothes and most proper hairstyles. Murmurs of increasing taxes and raids against blasphemers. The city was cracking down, per the Fire Lord's request. Katara wonders how much of that is Azula and how much is Ozai's influence.

It ignites the embers of her hatred for the Fire Nation anew. She sworn to not let personal loss consume her in a frantic bid for self-preservation. But she's still a proud member of the Southern Water Tribe. It’s a legacy tattoo’d onto her very being, part of her that lives in her blood. She can't separate that, no matter how hard she tries.

She wants— needs— to honor that legacy. She once swore to never to turn her back on people who need her. Despite her anger, she knows not all of the Fire Nation's people deserve her wrath. Not the Mika or Ren or the Matron. Not the dock master who guards their boat. Or the fishmonger who gives them a good price no matter the haul. Not any of those caught under the shiny boots of the ruling class just like the villagers in Jang Hui. 

But there are plenty that do. And she has the power to see it through.

_You're the one who said even in righteousness there's dirty work._

"I want to practice," she declares as she walks through the door. Zuko startles, looking guiltily up from his dinner.

"Sorry," he says through a mouthful of food. "I should've waited. But there's more," he says, pointing to the clay bowl filled with noodles. She pauses, stomach rumbling slightly as she grabs the warm bowl.

"Can we practice?" she asks this time, chagrined as she sinks to the floor across from him.

Zuko settles back as if he's preparing to meditate. If she didn't know better she'd say he looked relaxed in the low light, dressed in worn house clothes, hair far too long and hanging in his eyes. She wants to reach out and tuck it behind his ear. He refused to wear it in a topknot, not since he caught his reflection in a shop window and saw his father staring back. 

"Why?"

"I can't get better without practice."

He doesn't look like he believes her but acquiesces anyway.

Later that night she turns to the wall and for the first time since her injury when she closes her eyes she dreams dreams of dark clouds, silver that drips like rain and the steady, quiet reassurance of a sharp edged man always at her back.

_//_

The date with Taku is both uneventful and unhelpful. So uninformative that she can't even pretend he's worth turning into a source.

Sokka is downright gleeful about that development, or lack thereof, somehow taking the corporal's ineptitude as evidence of his own greatness. The only thing that tempers his good mood is the increasing worthlessness of the custom house information. It's more outdated than usual, or more irrelevant than usual. Less about food shipments and troop movements, and more reports of relative prices of rice in the Western Islands and anecdotes of the latest fads in the capital.

It's the debate of the evening in the tent. Toph, Jiangyi, Gao, Wan and Ariza seem to be of the mind that overall it's a good thing for their lives. Much better to be insignificant to the Fire Nation that a place of interest. Raza and Esho are skeptical of why good fortune would suddenly fall their way and Suki is mostly inclined to agree with them.

But Sokka? Sokka insists it's a Bad Thing, full stop.

"It's just sudden, and Raza did say another ship arrived yesterday, full of soldiers," he whispers later that night. Suki rolls onto her back, staring at the shadows cast on the ceiling. 

"I guess but they could be using us as a drop off point. Taku thought they might be shipped out soon, up north."

"Yeah, well he also thought you want to be a lady's maid. What does that even mean? Why can't Fire Nation nobles dress themselves? Anyway, point is clearly he's not the sharpest sword in the armory," he says rolling onto his side to look at her. She shrugs.

"And, Esho has seemed jumpier than normal. She's been late the last 2 meetings..." he trails off. Suki turns her head to glare at him in the low light.

"That's more than a serious allegation. Please tell me you haven't been spreading that around."

"Of course not, you're the first person I've even brought it up with," he says earnestly and that knowledge warms her heart a bit. "I'm just saying, you go on a bad date, info goes sour and Esho starts checking over her shoulder in the span of few weeks?"

"Coincidences aren't causes. And honestly, if I were her I'd be worried too after what happened with Rih."

"What are you talking about?"

"Rih got arrested the day I went out with Taku? Ariza bailed him out but it's not that big a town, they know who he is and that he's Esho's kid. I'd worry about my kids getting noticed by soldiers."

"You think about your kids?" Sokka interjects playfully. She rolls her eyes.

"I'm just saying before you go accusing a single mother of betrayal--"

"I was technically accusing her of spying."

"Not better," she say dryly. "But why don't we just ask Toph to quietly investigate?"

"Because when has Toph ever done anything quietly?" he snarks, gesturing with his head across the floor where Toph was snoring loudly.

"Can we agree to at least wait until this week's drop? Maybe it really was just a lull."

"Maybe..."

"And maybe Toph and Lem will get lucky on their field trip."

"I still don't think Lem is the guy for outreach, he's so, twitchy."

"Which makes him perfect. His Pai Sho face is terrible. People will believe him, even if they don't trust him. This is the next step you wanted," she reminds him.

Sokka makes a noise of agreement, slinging an arm across her stomach.

"Fine, one week."

She kisses the crown of his head. "Thank you."

_//_

The courtyard is packed, as it had been for his first Agni Kai, filled with noblemen and women in their finest clothing. But the crowd is silent, not jeering and the sky is stormy above them, rain pelting the the paving stones. He turns at the upswell of murmuring, punctuated by terrified shouts.

Katara floats down the steps, dripping in silver and swathed in navy so dark it's nearly black. Her hair is braided elaborately, beads twinkling together as she moves, a crown of silver a halo behind her head.

He moves toward her as the crowd cowers, crying out as waves as tall as buildings surround them, dancing under the waterbender's delicate hands. 

"Prince Zuko! Please!" a spectator cries, grasping at the hems of his robes. He shakes them off.

"I am not your prince," he tells them. "You forfeited me long ago."

He approaches the bottom step, pulling the golden flame from his hair and placing it in Katara's palm. He brushes past, coming to stand just behind her. He can hear the crackling of ice and the snap of metal and a feeling like relief bursts from his chest.

She peers over her shoulder at him, profile lit by lightening. It flashes in her eyes, a tempest, rolling from the pale blue of a clear summers day to the deep navy of a moonless night. Peace and rage, betrayal and redemption, deliverance and damnation all held in the in the same small woman. 

There was never a need for metamorphosis, he thinks, because there was never a contradiction, not for the ocean. Fluidity is in its nature.

There's movement behind Katara, a scuffling of armor and the orange heat of fire spirals down the courtyard. He moves to warn her, to yell but she raises a bejeweled hand to rest on his cheek, warm despite the cold of the rain. He shivers.

Her head whips back to the courtyard and this foolish, foolish man. He puffs up his chest and releases his flame again. Her hand withdraws and rises high above her head. The nameless general's eyes widen.

The arm drops and the waves crash down above them all.

Zuko sputters when the water finally disappears, gasping for air. He expects the darkness of their attic room but instead is greeted by the soft glow of the sun disappearing along the horizon and a warm delicate hand on his cheek, thumb brushing gently along the edges of remnants of his scar. He looks up, meeting calm, steady blue.

Then he catches the red and recoils in horror, back hitting the wooden fencing along what appears to be a balcony.

_Red drawn hastily across her face at the prison, her blood coating his hands and fear choking his throat._ _You're all I have left!_ But when he looks down his hands are pale as ever and his clothes are a soft maroon, not black. He goes to rub his temples and his hand catches in his hair— long, longer than he'll ever allow it to grow.

But when he looks up now he only sees Katara, bemused, sitting back on her heels, hands resting on her knees. Her hair is down and free of adornment, the red crosses her face purposefully and symmetrically. It follows down her arms, to her fingertips. An eyebrow raises in his direction.

Inside, the unmistakable sound of a door creaks. 

Zuko scrambles to his feet to move in front of her, flames leaping to his fingertips before a seconds thought. 

"Damn it, Zuko, it's just me!"

Fire extinguishes in a fine mist and the room, this time actually their small dark attic, comes into focus. He notes the diaphanous robes, the wide brimmed hat— _his_ hat, in fact, the dark paint curling over her arms and across her face that he knows in light is a warm red, all curtained in lace. She has the decency to look caught, if not quite guilty.

"A clean slate, huh?" he says accusingly.

"The window was locked," she accuses right back. He gathers himself from the ground and gives the window a firm push and it lurches on its hinges. Katara groans, setting the hat back among his things. Her hair catches on the strap, tangling in her face.

"How long have you been sneaking out?" he asks. She shrugs. 

"A few weeks maybe?"

"Doing _what_ exactly?"

"Helping those who can't help themselves," she says, daring him to call her on it. 

She pulls water from a small basin, washing the paint from her face, transforming from mysterious vigilante back to girl he'd become inextricably familiar with. The real Katara, who only existed freely within the four walls of their room. Proud waterbender, hot-tempered but caring friend. The attic had been the only place Katara and Zuko could be themselves, leaving the quiet Kata and severe Lee at the door. Katara drops the burgundy robes and tugs on a tattered tunic over her sarashi. Her exposed skin is smooth and unblemished and offers no indication for how long she's been sneaking out or how dangerous her escapades were, one of the benefits of being both a master fighter and a master healer he's sure. Watching her, Zuko wonders if the illusion of separation between their assumed lives and their actual ones has been irreparably broken.

"You're the one who said there's dirty work in righteousness," Katara reminds him, filling the silence the way she used to when they'd make camp in the woods. Talk until he caved and talked back.

So he bites.

"But is that sustainable?"

"Does it matter? There's always terrible people looking to take advantage of others."

He worries faintly, if her death wish has re-rooted. _Of course it matters!_ he thinks. The last time she'd pushed risk so relentlessly had ended poorly.

"And your grand plan is?"

Katara pauses at that, sliding down to sit under the windowsill. Zuko closes the open pane and sits down next to her.

"Knock them down a peg."

"I thought the Painted Lady was a benevolent spirit," he offers neutrally. 

"Isn't minimizing harm in the first place benevolence?" she challenges.

He rests a hand on top of hers, "Maybe."

She shrugs him off climbing onto her bedroll and turning her back toward him. "Go back to sleep, Zuko."

//

The gap in the wall collapses and Suki gasps, her ribs slowly being crushed by the compressed stone. She blinks, adjusting to the candlelight, to see three sets of gold eyes glowering at her.

The man closest to the indented wall sighs and flicks his wrist at the other figure in the room, an earthbender shaking from the effort of holding her up. She notices his dirty clothes, the chafed skin around his wrists and ankles. She panics as she thinks of Wan, waiting her outside. He's a skilled earthbender now, after much tutelage from Toph, but is not nearly as unassuming as the blind girl. 

She starts screaming. Not to run, or get away or anything that would out her as having an accomplice but screaming, loud and high, and praying Wan understands the obscure message: _Run._

The earthbender forces her out of the wall clumsily and she lands on the custom house floor hard on her knees. Her wrists and ankles are bound to the floor before she can react and she bristles at the way she has to crane her neck to look at the men above her.

_The whistling as the guards let her into the yard. Promises to visit her later, accompanied by leers and grabbing hands. A rough fight that led to her being tossed in an icebox not designed for non benders._

_When her time was up she'd been hungry for two days, and eagerly watched the next meal make its way down the block to her normal cell. The cold hadn't quite worked its way from her bones when the door opened swiftly, knocking her stiff body to the ground. The guard tossed her food on the floor and with a quirk of his head, closed the door behind him._

_She didn't like where this was going at all._

_The guard tutted behind his mask. "I didn't believe them when they said they put some girl in the cooler and still not sure I do. How big a threat can someone who looks so pretty on their knees be?"_

_She didn't wait for the advance, launching herself at his his legs. She knocked him off balance, throwing his head against the door and the metal on metal rung like a bell._

_"You little she devil."_

_She tossed him harder against the door and enjoyed her meal in silence until his partner came looking for him. And when they tossed her back in solitary, fresh bruised blossoming, she closed her eyes and dreamed of the South Pole._

The graying firebender sighs again. "I guess we owe that woman her money. I hate it when tips payoff, I much rather keep the bonus at year's end."

The earthbender dithers uncomfortably behind him and Suki purses her lip in disgust. "Sir? Am I...?"

The soldier-- a lieutenant, from what Suki can see of his uniform-- somehow sighs even louder, as if he was suffering the most in the situation. "Probation and if anyone so much as sees a rock move after tonight, you'll never see the Earth Kingdom again."

"Y-yes sir, thank you sir."

_Coward,_ Suki thinks of the pathetic man before her. _False promises make you go belly up so quickly._

"You on the other hand," the lieutenant says, "I don't like people nosing around my business. I especially don't like spies. Who do you work for?"

Suki keeps her jaw shut tight and her eyes fixed forward, mustering as much dignity as her position will allow. More irritation from the commander.

"Have it your way then. Everyone talks eventually."

Despite his aggrieved nonchalance, there's a foreboding in his words that spooks her. She swallows heavily and forces her chin up as she's torn from the custom house floor and shackled. 

When she's marched past the southern side of the building there's no evidence of any earthbending or earthbenders.

Relief, small but there, washes over her.

//

His body comes to a rough stop, his knees bending against his will and his hands releasing his sword. 

She's been going easy on him, he thinks, choking slightly under her grip. The few times she's let him be her practice dummy, gently moving his arms above his head, or forcing him to make a rude gesture for a laugh, that had been nothing like this. It's terrifying.

And incredible.

She couldn't look more like the spirit she imitates, backed by moonlight and power radiating from her fingertips.

_Stunning is the word you’re looking for there, buddy_

He ignores his subconscious. That particular acknowledgement is... freighted. It's enough to be awed by his dearest (only) friend. 

His hands move on their own accord, pulling the mask from his face. It's barely cleared his forehead when he lurches forward, control of his muscles returned to him without notice.

"Zu- LEE!" she hisses, glancing around. He crumbles to the ground with a pained grunt, reclaiming his mask and hastily tying it back. "I could've killed you! What the hells do you think you're doing?"

The ethereal spirit disappears, replaced by a _furious_ woman, who tugs him off the main street into a narrow alley her arms crossed tightly across her chest, lips turned down somewhere between a snarl and a frown. It reminds him of the mountain village with the bigoted shopkeeper, playing at a relationship to blend in. Here, in the dead of night, no one would comment on two young people standing so close in dark alleys. Make nasty assumptions maybe, but not comment. 

She's pulled back her lace veil—he meant to ask her where she'd found something so expensive— so he can truly appreciate her disappointment and Zuko knows he's walking a thin line no matter how he responds. 

"Why do you get to have all the fun?" he replies sarcastically, mirroring her stance. Katara's eyes narrow and for a moment he's afraid he's misjudged and jokes weren't the right route either.

"As some sort of vigilante actor?" she asks confused.

"I'm— what? I'm the Blue Spirit? Wanted across several nations? Did Aang never tell you guys? I can't tell if you're messing with me or not."

She shakes her head ruefully, relaxing and dropping her arms. She peers out into the empty street.

"Catch me up at home."

They arrive to their street just before daybreak and he can hear the rustling of a city barely beginning to wake up. She sends him up the room before her, showing him a small coin purse by way of explanation as she sneaks into the back door of the brothel. 

He makes a passable pot of tea while he waits and offers her a cup when she finally slips through the door, devoid of her billowy robe and his hat tucked under her arm. She settles in their spot under the window, beckoning for the steaming mug.

"So, in between chasing us you found time to impersonate a spirit?"

He rolls his eyes and explains it all-- his mother's childhood stories, his late bending, Piandao, the boredom of the ship, Zhao, rescuing Aang. She listens without interrupting, save for the gentle quirk of her lips or periodic raised eyebrow.

When he finishes she moves from her curled position next to him and he tries not register the loss of the feeling of her should against his too deeply. 

She pushes her sleeping roll aside and wedges up a floor board, arm disappearing into the bones of the building. "I was going to wait until summer, for your birthday," she says, pulling out a long package that she lays down before them. "I thought you just liked swords, like Sokka. You mentioned these back on Ember Island."

Out of the butcher's paper emerges a shining set of Dao swords. He picks one up carefully, testing its weight in his hand. It's well balanced, with leather grips and a sharp blade. No doubt, expensive.

"Where did you get these?"

"Do you actually want that answer?"

"Not really," he concedes, picking up the partner blade. He moves away from the window and Katara so he he can swing the blades. The motion is muscle memory, the movement of the swords around him as relaxing as his meditations. 

He catches Katara observing him with a small smile on her face. He drops his arms to his side, brushing the hair out of his face with his wrist.

"I could teach you if you wanted," he offers, flipping one the blades to hand her the hilt. She waves him away.

"I have my own," she says, daggers of ice crystallizing in her hands. "The perfect crime too, leaves no trace."

There's a second chance here, to acknowledge the obvious. To question her motives. But at the same time he finds he doesn't care. Or rather he cares, but he trusts Katara's moral compass more than he trusts his own. On some level, he has since he watched Yon Rha cower in the mud, a recipient of mercy, not forgiveness. 

Those people must deserve whatever's coming for them. 

And he can do the dirty work for her. With her.

(There's not much he wouldn't do if she asked. And he thinks he's not self-aggrandizing when he theorizes that she feels the same.)

//

The stack of inventory scrolls by the door tumbles to the ground Sokka jumps, reaching for his new boomerang-- an original Toph Beifong design-- arm raised before he sees Wan in the entryway, wide eyed and bleeding. He lowers his arms but his grip on the weapon tightens with fear. "Where's Suki?" he asks lowly. Wan shakes his head.

"They knew. The soldiers-- they dragged her out and she was screaming so I left for help."

Sokka's blood runs cold-- what could have possibly been so terrible to make Suki scream? His mind plays out horrible scenarios in quick sequence, each more nauseating than the last and he thinks he's going to pass out.

One week he'd promised her, before they'd root out any possible mole. It had been a week, Toph and Lem would be back by sunrise and they'd finally be able to put the whole episode behind them. 

_Tui and La._

He forcible wrenches his mind away from panic, settling into a facade of leadership that he wears like armor.

"Okay. Right. Suki won't talk but clearly someone has. We need to warn the others-- do you think you can catch Toph and Lem on the road?" he asks. It's sounds so calm and reasonable that he almost convinces himself.

"I'll try," the bigger man responds. Sokka grabs his forearm. 

"We don't have time for try. Take Jiangyi, as much metal as you can carry from the stash--" It won't be much but he's loathe to let perfectly good weapons go to waste." --and get out. Tell Toph to take you to the rendezvous, she'll know what you mean. I'm going to find Suki and the others."

"You can't just show up at the jail."

"Trust me, I've broken into higher stakes locals than some village jail."

Wan looks like he wants to argue, guilt wresting his face. Sokka closes his and eyes and tries to channel his dad's signature scolding look-- firm, but insistent. He'd been on the receiving end of it so many times it was seared into his memory. 

Wan deflates slightly, and gives him a curt nod. "Be safe, Sokka."

The flap hasn't fluttered shut before he doubles over, hyperventilating.

_C'mon buddy,_ he thinks, _pull yourself together._

He grabs a satchel and shoves scrolls filled with transcribed messages and interpreted maps and vague battle plans inside. He tucks the sheath of his boomerang under his tunic.

Pausing at the door, he gives the empty space a regretfully look. Then he lights a scroll with a spark rock and tosses onto the remaining pile.

He takes off toward the village, lit by the roaring fire behind him.

//

The damn bells.

“I swear I’m going to crack each one,” Katara scowls, throwing the bagful of food down onto the dirty table, cluttered with bottles. 

She uncorks her own, drinking deeply, spurred by the sight of the open floorboard lit by a solitary candle. The familiar blue necklace catches the light, throwing shadows over the small portrait propped up against the wood.

“Please tell me you weren’t drinking in the street,” Zuko implores.

“I wasn’t until I was wished a joyous victory day.”

He hums in response, gesturing for her to share. She acquiesces, tossing him a bottle of his own that he catches with the deftness of someone who spins swords regularly.

As a rule, they don't drink often. But it's been two years to the day they lost everything and she's stuck in a city awash in candle light celebrating the death of her friends and the destruction of the world. She allows herself a drink.

She wonders if they'd be proud of her, of them, or they'd be ashamed of what she'd become. The thought of their disappointment burns like acid. She sidles up to stand next to the window, overlooking their makeshift balcony. Zuko bumps her shoulder gently.

_In every iteration, in vengeance or mercy, he was always at her side_.

She takes the bottle from Zuko's hands, shaking away past fever dreams and shame and pulls deep.

(Zuko would not—does not— judge her for her darkest moments. Maybe they're each others' worst enablers. Maybe that's exactly what they need.)

"Are you okay?" he asks, gently prying the empty bottle back. 

No, not really, is what she doesn't say. He already knows that. She's sad and exhausted, just like him. She hasn't allowed herself the luxury since the day she broke down in the mountains.

But maybe once a year, is acceptable. A day of mourning, despite their agreement. When all their emotions are pushed dangerously close to the surface by the spirits damned bells. She can feels her eyes start to water and tilts her head back, blinking furiously. 

She's not okay.

She catches his concerned gaze and closes her eyes. She doesn't want pity, least of all from someone who's in the same place she is. She doesn't want to consider her pain. She wants to forget it all, to ignore the blistering in her heart.

She watches Zuko break into a new bottle, the pale skin of his neck exposed as he tosses it back. He'd pulled the hair out of his face, tying the top of it back. The rest swung around his chin. It's a good look she thinks. Despite his fears, he looks nothing like his father. He looks young and strong, regal even. She's reminded his unspoken disavowals aside, he is still a prince. A handsome one at that.

Her mouth feels dry. The wine is making her light and heady, and her skin is burning in a way that has nothing to do with the firebender's proximity.

Zuko doesn't follow up his question, answer enough in her silence. 

Steady, understanding, Zuko. Who trusts her and believes in her and is made of the same sorrow she is. His presence dulls it, with their easy camaraderie within the four walls of the rundown room that's become their whole world.

(The rest of the Caldera doesn't count, Katara and Zuko don't live there, their alter egos-- both of them, mundane and criminal--do)

He's only one who hasn't abandoned her.

She's sad and lonely and he's _there._

He doesn't flinch when she crowds his space or brushes her lips softly against his. His eyes close and his arms hang at his side. It's a long moment when he doesn't move at all.

Until she begins to pull back, embarrassed, and he follows, loosely winding one hand around hers and kissing her back.

The kiss is tentative and gentle. It's nice in the purest sense of the word. None of those are words she would associate with either of them. They're stubborn with a cynacism forged in conflict.

He's warm, warmer than the wine induced buzz and a few loose hairs escape their ties and tickle pleasantly at her face.

She's not going to lie to herself and say she hadn't thought about this in the safety of night's darkness, that she wasn't a little more than curious. He's the only person she's spent time with for the better part of two years. She could even justify this-- or however she allowed it to escalate-- as a happy escape from their shared reality.

But ignorant bliss was a myth. That was the first thing she'd learned in this forsaken city.

She pulls away slowly, two fingers to grazing his lips in replacement. He sighs, breath warm on her fingers and opens his eyes to look at her. The gold isn't fire but honey, sweet and sluggish. He looks as melancholy as she feels. She rests her forehead to his.

"I don't think we're any position for a wartime romance," she whispers.

He breathes sharply through his nose, the closest thing to a laugh she's heard from him all week.

"Didn't you know? There's no war, the glorious Fire Nation has brought peace on earth," he says, voice low and dripping with sarcasm.

_There's no war in Ba Sing Se._

"Do you think it'll ever get better?"

"I don't know."

It's an honest answer.

He pulls away to sit against the windowsill. She sinks down and leans against him, resting a hand over where she knows the starburst scar lies under his shirt. His breath hitches slightly before quickly evening out, lifting his arm to wrap around her shoulders.

"Sorry to take advantage of you in your vulnerable state," she apologizes.

"It wasn't exactly a hardship."

"Oh?"

He raises an eyebrow at her, "My partner in literal crime is beautiful woman who could easily kick my ass. I'm only a man, Katara."

"I'll keep that in mind," she says, the inflection of her voice just this edge of provocative. He allows her a small smirk. 

"Please do."

//

Her ribs shift painfully when the guards shove her inside the cell, a dirt room with a rusting metal door. She thinks one well placed kick might knock it out of its frame but one well placed kick might also knock her rib out of alignment. Clearly, it's nothing more than a holding cell, meant for your average ruffians. It's nothing like the Boiling Rock's mostly solid door, a slot just big enough for a taller person to peer through. She settles back against the bench, thinking desperately for a plan.

"Uh sir, we're under strict instructions not to leave her alone until morning pick up."

The guards, barely out of their teens themselves, nervously address someone at the front.

"You realize I'll have to report your uncooperativeness to my superiors?"

"Uh, actually no, there's no problem. We're just wait at the station?"

"You do that."

The voice is clearly lying by the skin of his teeth and she knows that voice.

She walks over to peer out her cell and sees one very pissed off Corporal Taku storming her way.

She leans against the rusty door casually, as if jail is a perfectly normal place to meet a former first date. Taku gets as close as the door will allow, staring angrily at her before breaking the ice.

"You were using me."

It's a statement, not a question and honestly, Suki almost laughs.

"I wasn't," she swears. Taku just frowns harder.

"Why would you do it? All I wanted was to help you."

"Because your people have made my life miserable. Ozai is a crazy mass murderer. Need I say more?"

The motive is her own but the flippancy is all Sokka. Taku's eyes go round as saucers at that and she vaguely wonders if he'd ever had anyone so openly disparage the Firelord to his face. Or maybe it's the fact that the timid lady's maid he'd thought he'd met is insolent spy. 

She thinks of Raza's son and wonders if free will or threat that brought Taku to the army in the first place. She almost feels bad for what she's about to do.

"And besides, you weren't even worth using."

Taku flinches as if hit and his hand fists, telegraphing the movement well before he executes it, sending a burst of flames through the metal bars. 

He's opened himself up, relying too much on the self importance of his position, on his bending and neglecting the night stick hanging freely from his waist. 

Suki yanks him roughly against the bars, stripping him of the blunt weapon and sticking her arms through the wide openings. She winces slightly as the left one burns against metal heated by firebending. 

She raises the stick to his throat, pinning him securely and gently increasing the pressure on his neck. He slumps to the ground after a moment and Suki kicks the rusty door loose. 

She dusts off her hands. Much easier than the Rock.

She creeps out of the rundown jail building and flees into the shadows, considering her options and only coming up with one.

She'd promised Sokka they'd search for the mole after the latest drop. 

No time like the present to start.


End file.
